By Thomas Kissling

 The Alpine region is characterized by a great diversity in all spatial dimensions and qualities. This circumstance is not to be read primarily as the result of administrative drawing of borders, but first of all as an expression of the alpine topography, determined at the same time by intensive cultivation by humankind. However, the assumption that this configuration, seen against a background of massive rocks and steep ridges, is a steady formation would be misleading. For the Alps are not a stable structure, but a dynamic and sensitive organism. Here, boundaries are ceaselessly overcome and continuously shifted.