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Duplicate networks: the Berlin botanical institutions as a ‘clearing house’ for colonial plant material, 1891–1920

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 April 2022

Katja Kaiser
Katja Kaiser*
Affiliation:
Humanities of Nature, Museum für Naturkunde – Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science
*
*Corresponding author: Katja Kaiser, Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

For centuries, herbarium specimens were the focus of exchange in global botanical networks. The aim was the ‘complete’ registration of the flora, for which ‘complete’ collections in botanical institutions worldwide were considered to be a necessary basis, although this ardently sought-after ideal was never achieved. The study of colonial plants became a special priority of botanical research in the metropolises. With knowledge of the many treasures of the plant world considered the key to securing wealth and power, political and economic interests influenced both the organization and the subject matter of scientific research. After the German Reich began annexing colonies in the 1880s, legal regulations established Berlin's botanical institutions as the research centre on colonial flora. They also became a clearing house for plant material from overseas. Berlin-based curators selected duplicates of herbarium specimens from the German colonies, distributing them to other botanical institutions throughout Germany. More importantly, duplicates became a form of currency in trans-imperial networks, which relied on reciprocity. In exchange for duplicate German colonial herbarium specimens, the Berlin institutions received vast quantities of botanical samples from their British, Dutch, French and American counterparts.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 55 , Special Issue 3: The Issue of Duplicates , September 2022 , pp. 279 - 296
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of British Society for the History of Science

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References

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16 Engler and Urban, op. cit. (15).

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20 See http://plants.jstor.org/search?genus=Beilschmiedia&species=staudtii (accessed 26 February 2021).

21 Beatrix Hoffmann, Das Museumsobjekt als Tausch- und Handelsgegenstand: Zum Bedeutungswandel musealer Objekte im Kontext der Veräußerungen aus dem Sammlungsbestand des Museums für Völkerkunde Berlin, Berlin: LIT, 2012, p. 163; Ina Heumann, ‘The trouble with doubles’, in Ina Heumann, Anita Hermannstädter and Kerstin Pannhorst (eds.), The Nature of Things: Stories from a Natural History Museum, Berlin: Reimer Verlag, 2021, pp. 64–7.

22 International code of botanical nomenclature, p. 8, at www.iapt-taxon.org/Tokyo-d/DEUCODE2.pdf (accessed 26 February 2021).

23 I would like to thank Dr Matthias Schultz, senior collection manager at the Herbarium Hamburgense, for the information he provided on the specifics of duplicates in botany.

24 See the contribution of Anne Mackinney in this issue.

25 Regina Dauser, Stefan Hächler, Michael Kempe, Franz Mauelshagen and Martin Stuber, ‘Einleitung’, in Dauser, Hächler, Kempe, Mauelshagen and Stuber (eds.), Wissen im Netz: Botanik und Pflanzentransfer in europäischen Korrespondenznetzen des 18. Jahrhunderts, Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2008, pp. 10–13; Bettina Dietz, Das System der Natur: Die kollaborative Wissenspraktik der Botanik im 18. Jahrhundert, Cologne: Böhlau, 2017.

26 Glenn Penny, Objects of Culture: Ethnology and Ethographic Museums in Imperial Germany, Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.

27 Adolf Engler, assessment relocation, 23 November 1891, GStA PK I. HA Rep. 76, Va, Sekt. 2, Tit. XIX, nr. 49, vol. 1, pp. 118–48, published in Notizblatt des Königl. botanischen Gartens und Museums zu Berlin (September 1897) 2(10), pp. 295–314, 300; Hans Walter Lack, ‘Kew: Ein Vorbild für Berlin-Dahlem?’, in Michael Rohde (ed.), Preußische Gärten in Europa: 300 Jahre Gartengeschichte, Leipzig: Edition Leipzig, 2007, pp. 182–5, 184.

28 Staffan Müller-Wille and Katrin Böhme, ‘Biologie: Wissenschaft vom Werden, Wissenschaft im Werden’, in Geschichte der Universität Unter den Linden 1810–2010, vol. 4, Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2010, pp. 425–46.

29 Friedrich Karl Timler and Bernhard Zepernick, Der Berliner Botanische Garten: Seine 300jährige Geschichte vom Hof- und Küchengarten des Großen Kurfürsten zur wissenschaftlichen Forschungsstätte, Berlin: Haude & Spener, 1978.

30 Karl E. Born, ‘Preußen im Kaiserreich 1871–1918: Führungsmacht des Reiches und Aufgehen im Reich’, in Wolfgang Neugebauer (ed.), Handbuch der Preußischen Geschichte, vol. 3: Vom Kaiserreich zum 20. Jahrhundert und Große Themen der Geschichte Preußens, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2001, 15–148; Bernhard vom Brocke, ‘Hochschul- und Wissenschaftspolitik in Preußen und im Deutschen Kaiserreich 1882–1907: Das “System Althoff”’, in Peter Baumgart (ed.), Bildungspolitik in Preußen zur Zeit des Kaiserreichs, Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1980, pp. 9–118, 65–9.

31 Engler, op. cit. (27); Notizblatt, op. cit. (27), p. 310. On thoroughness and scientificity as features of the self-perception and foreign perception of German colonialism see Ulrike Lindner, Koloniale Begegnungen: Deutschland und Großbritannien als Imperialmächte in Afrika 1880–1914, Frankfurt am Main and New York: Campus, 2011, pp. 8–9.

32 For a detailed comparison see Kaiser, op. cit. (18), pp. 112–15; on Kew see Jim Endersby, Imperial Nature: Joseph Hooker and the Practices of Victorian Science, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2008.

33 Horst Gründer, Geschichte der Deutschen Kolonien, Paderborn: Schöningh, 2000.

34 Deutsches Kolonialblatt (1891) 2(24), p. 535.

35 ‘Anweisung, betreffend die Behandlung der aus den Deutschen Schutzgebieten eingehenden wissenschaftlichen Sammlungen’, Berlin, 3 August 1889, Centralblatt für die gesamte Unterrichtsverwaltung in Preußen (1890) 32(10–11), pp. 644–5; Katja Kaiser, ‘Sammelpraxis und Sammlungspolitik: Das Beispiel Georg Zenker’, in Patricia Rahemipour (ed.), Bipindi – Berlin: Ein wissenschaftshistorischer und künstlerischer Beitrag zur Kolonialgeschichte des Sammelns, Berlin: BGBM Press, 2018, pp. 7–46.

36 ‘Die aus deutschen Schutzgebieten hierher gelangenden naturwissenschaftlichen Sammlungen’, GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 76 Va Sekt 1, Tit X, Nr. 24, Bd. 1–3.

37 ‘Anweisung’, op. cit. (35).

38 ‘Die aus deutschen Schutzgebieten hierher gelangenden naturwissenschaftlichen Sammlungen’, op. cit. (36).

39 Bruno Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987, pp. 232–41; John Gascoigne, ‘The ordering of nature and the ordering of empire: a commentary’, in David Philip Miller and Peter Hanns Reill (eds.), Visions of Empire: Voyages, Botany and Representations of Nature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 107–16.

40 Cittadino, op. cit. (10), p. 134.

41 See the annual reports of the Botanical Research Centre for the German Colonies especially in GStA PK I. HA Rep. 76, Va, Sekt. 2, Tit. X, Nr. 89 B, vols. 1–2; for an extensive list also Kaiser, op. cit. (18).

42 Ignatz Urban, ‘Kurze Geschichte der Entwickelung der Sammlungen’, in Ministerium der geistlichen, Unterrichts- und Medizinalangelegenheiten (ed.), Der königliche botanische Garten und das königliche botanische Museum zu Dahlem, Berlin: Horn & Raasch, 1909, pp. 11–30, 29; Paul Hiepko, ‘Die Sammlungen des Botanischen Museums Berlin-Dahlem’, in Claus Schnarrenberger, Hildemar Scholz and Paul Hiepko (eds.), Geschichte der Botanik in Berlin, Berlin: Colloquium Verlag, 1990, pp. 297–318.

43 Luke Keogh, The Wardian Case: How a Simple Box Moved Plants and Changed the World, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2020, p. 167.

44 Hiepko, op. cit. (42), p. 302.

45 See correspondence between the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Culture and the directors of the Berlin Botanical Museum, the Museum of Natural History and the Ethnological Museum: GStA PK I. HA Rep. 76, Va, Sekt. 1, Tit. X, Nr. 24, vol. 3, pp. 218–47.

46 Masemann, Bronwen, ‘Power, possession and post-modernism: contemporary readings of the colonial archive’, Faculty of Information Quarterly (2009) 1(1)Google Scholar, at https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/78433/2/15464-37625-1-PB.pdf (accessed 26 February 2021); Ann Laura Stoler, ‘Colonial archives and the arts of governance’, Archival Science (2002) 2(1–2), pp. 87–109.

47 Knut Eliassen, ‘The archives of Michel Foucault’, in Eivind Røssaak (ed.), The Archive in Motion: New Conceptions of the Archive in Contemporary Thought and New Media Practices, Oslo: Novus forlag, 2010, pp. 29–52, 30.

48 Masemann, op. cit. (46).

49 Lynn K. Nyhart, Modern Nature: The Rise of the Biological Perspective in Germany, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009, pp. 241 f.

50 Nyhart, op. cit. (49).

51 On such complaints cf. the few documented examples in GStA PK I. HA Rep. 76, Va, Sekt. 1, Tit. X, nr. 24, vol. 3, pp. 102–4.

52 Foreign Office to Ministry of Culture, 7 November 1904, GStA PK I. HA Rep. 76, Va, Sekt. 1, Tit. X, nr. 24, vol. 3, pp. 218–9, 219.

53 Karl Möbius to Ministry of Culture, 30 December 1904, GStA PK I. HA Rep. 76, Va, Sekt. 1, Tit. X, nr. 24, vol. 3, pp. 229–30, 229.

54 Möbius, op. cit. (53), p. 229; see also Adolf Engler to Karl Möbius, 19 December 1904, GStA PK I. HA Rep. 76, Va, Sekt. 1, Tit. X, nr. 24, vol. 3, pp. 240–1; Ministry of Culture to Foreign Office, 24 January 1905, GStA PK I. HA Rep. 76, Va, Sekt. 1, Tit. X, nr. 24, vol. 3, pp. 246–7.

55 Karl Möbius to Ministry of Culture, 30 December 1904, GStA PK I. HA Rep. 76, Va, Sekt. 1, Tit. X, nr. 24, vol. 3, pp. 229–30, 229.

56 Disputes over the distribution of specimen were common. See Daniel Simpson, ‘Expeditionary collections: Haslar Hospital Museum and the circulation of public knowledge, 1815–1855’, in Felix Driver, Mark Nesbitt and Caroline Cornish (eds.), Mobile Museums: Collections in Circulation, London: UCL Press, 2021, pp. 149–77.

57 Adolf Engler to Ministry of Culture, 16 June 1899, GStA PK I. HA Rep. 76, Va, Sekt. 1, Tit. X, nr. 24, vol. 3, pp. 102–4, 103.

58 Engler to Möbius, op. cit. (54), p. 240.

59 Urban, op. cit. (2), p. 179, p. 197; Hoffmann, op. cit. (21), pp. 158–60.

60 Urban, op. cit. (2), p. 179; Engler to Möbius, op. cit. (54); Cornish, Caroline and Driver, Felix, ‘Specimens distributed: the circulation of objects from Kew's Museum of Economic Botany, 1847–1914’, Journal of the History of Collections (2020) 32(2), pp. 327–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61 Circular decree, Imperial Colonial Office, Friedrich von Lindequist, 25 August 1911, GStA PK I. HA Rep. 76, Va, Sekt. 1, Tit. X, nr. 24, vol. 3, p. 297.

62 Georg Volkens, ‘Die Botanische Zentralstelle für die Kolonien, ihre Zwecke und Ziele’, Jahresbericht der Vereinigung für angewandte Botanik (1907) 5, pp. 2–18, 3.

63 Volkens, op. cit. (62); Katja Kaiser, ‘Exploration and exploitation: German colonial botany at the Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin’, in Dominik Geppert and Frank Lorenz Müller (eds.), Sites of Imperial Memory: Commemorating Colonial Rule in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015, pp. 225–42; Bernhard Zepernick, ‘Die Botanische Zentralstelle für die deutschen Kolonien’, in Ulrich van der Heyden and Joachim Zeller (eds.), Kolonialmetropole Berlin: Eine Spurensuche, Berlin: Berlin Edition, 2002, pp. 107–11.

64 Volkens, op. cit. (62).

65 Volkens, op. cit. (62).

66 Volkens, op. cit. (62); on contracts with shipping companies see the exchange of letters between the Foreign Office and shipping companies in GStA PK I. HA Rep. 76, Va, Sekt. 1, Tit. X, nr. 24, vol. 2, pp. 231–40.

67 Annual Report of the Botanical Research Centre for the German Colonies 1901/02, GStA PK I. HA Rep. 76, Va, Sekt. 2, Tit. X, Nr. 89 B, vol. 2, pp. 264–74, 272; Adolf Engler, ‘Bericht über den Botanischen Garten und das Botanische Museum zu Berlin im Rechnungsjahr 1910’, Sonderabdruck aus der Chronik der Universität, vol. 24, Halle: Buchdruckerei des Waisenhauses, 1911, p. 9.

68 Annual Report, op. cit. (67), p. 272; Engler, op. cit. (67), p. 9.

69 Harald Fischer-Tiné, Pidgin-Knowledge: Wissen und Kolonialismus, Zurich: diaphanes, 2013; pp. 21, 27, 58.

70 Urban, op. cit. (42), pp. 27–9.

71 The annual reports of the Botanical Research Centre for the German Colonies show that many collectors who had received equipment later sent in objects from the colonies. See Annual Reports, op. cit. (18).

72 Urban, op. cit. (2), p. 179.

73 Urban, op. cit. (2), p. 170.

74 Urban, op. cit. (2), pp. 174, 199–210, contains an extensive list of institutions or collectors Berlin exchanged duplicates with between 1847 and 1913. The list also indicates the years of exchange that could differ for various institutions. The term ‘number’ refers to the number of different plants collected. There may be several specimens of one number.

75 Urban, op. cit. (2), pp. 174, 199–210.

76 Annual Report Botanical Research Centre 1891/92, op. cit. (3).

77 On Victoria see Timler, Friedrich Karl and Zepernick, Bernhard, ‘German colonial botany’, Berichte der Deutschen Botanischen Gesellschaft (1987) 100(1–4), pp. 143–68, 153–4Google Scholar; on Amani see P. Wenzel Geissler, Rene Gerrets, Ann H. Kelly and Peter Mangesho (eds.), Amani: Auf den Spuren einer kolonialen Forschungsstation in Tansania, Bielefeld: Transcript, 2020; Detlef Bald and Gerhild Bald, Das Forschungsinstitut Amani: Wirtschaft und Wissenschaft in der deutschen Kolonialpolitik. Ostafrika 1900–1918, Munich: Weltforum 1972.

78 On the role of local populations see Rebekka Habermas and Alexandra Przyrembel (eds.), Von Käfern, Märkten und Menschen: Kolonialismus und Wissen in der Moderne, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013. Andrew Goss also notes in his study on Buitenzorg/Bogor the lack of written sources on indigenous workers, whose tasks he determined mainly from photographs. See Andrew Goss, The Floracrats: State-Sponsored Science and the Failure of the Enlightenment in Indonesia, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2011, p. 72.

79 Women were not considered for this training. On the role of German women in the colonial empire see Lora Wildenthal, German Women for Empire, 1884–1945, Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2001.

80 Kaiser, op. cit. (18).

81 Urban, op. cit. (2), p. 197; Ludwig Diels, ‘Zum Gedächtnis von Adolf Engler’, Botanische Jahrbücher (1931) 64, pp. 1–34; Adolf Engler to Ministry of Culture, 7 January 1890, GStA PK I. HA Rep. 76, Va, Sekt. 2, Tit. X, nr. 89 B, vol. 1, pp. 144–7, 144.

82 Engler to Möbius, op. cit. (54), p. 241.

83 Urban, op. cit. (2), pp. 179, 199; Hiepko, op. cit. (42), p. 312.

84 Urban, op. cit. (2), p. 197.

85 See Laurent Dedryvère, Patrick Farges, Félicité Indravati and Elisa Goudin-Steinmann (eds.), Transimpérialités contemporaines/Moderne Transimperialitäten: Rivalités, contacts, émulation/Rivalitäten, Kontakte, Wetteifer, Berlin: Peter Lang, 2021.

86 Timler and Zepernick, op. cit. (29), pp. 67–93; Hans Walter Lack (ed.), Humboldts grüne Erben: Der Botanische Garten und das Botanische Museum in Dahlem 1910 bis 2010, Berlin: BGBM Press, 2010, pp. 92–5; Hiepko, op. cit. (42).

87 See http://search.biocase.org/bgbm (accessed 26 February 2021).

88 See https://bionomia.net/Q103473/deposited-at (accessed 26 February 2021).

89 See www.cbd.int (accessed 26 February 2021).

90 For instance, CETAF Code of Conduct and Best Practice for Access and Benefit-Sharing, at www.cbd.int/abs/submissions/icnp-3/EU-Taxonomic-practices.pdf (accessed 26 February 2021).

91 German Museums Association (ed.), Guidelines for German Museums Care of Collections from Colonial Contexts, Berlin: Medialis, 2021, p. 8.

92 Bell, Joshua A., Christen, Kimberly and Turin, Mark, ‘Introduction: after the return’, Museum Anthropology Review (2013) 7(1–2), pp. 2–21, 5Google Scholar.

93 For instance, REFLORA, a virtual herbarium initiated by the Brazilian government, was founded in 2010–11 ‘with the objective to rescue and make available images and information concerning Brazilian plants deposited chiefly in overseas herbaria’. On the platform, this is termed a ‘repatriation process’ of images and data, for the scientific community and the general public. See Institute of Research Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden, ‘RELORA Programme’, REFLORA Brazilian Plants: Historic Rescue and Virtual Herbarium for Knowledge and Conservation of the Brazilian Flora, at http://re-flora.jbrj.gov.br/reflora/PrincipalUC/PrincipalUC.do?lingua=en (accessed 26 February 2021).