Botanical central office for the German colonies
The Botanical Central Office for the German Colonies was a department of the Berlin Botanical Garden that existed from 1891 to 1920 and 1941 to 1943 .
history
In 1889, the first governor of Cameroon , Julius Freiherr von Soden , suggested setting up botanical gardens , institutes and research facilities in the German colonies . These would be useful for researching the German colonies and also provide important knowledge for plantation management . Baron von Soden therefore initiated the establishment of the "Botanical Garden Victoria", which still exists today, in what is now Limbe in Cameroon.
The director of the Berlin Botanical Garden, Adolf Engler , who was very fond of the governor's idea, brought about the establishment of the “Botanical Central Office for the German Colonies” in Berlin-Schöneberg at the Foreign Office . Work could begin on March 31, 1891. But the area in Schöneberg turned out to be too small and Engler received permission from the Reichstag to move to Dahlem. The financial support of the German Reich was also increased considerably. Now seeds could be archived and by 1907 more than 16,500 living young plants were shipped to the German colonies in Ward's boxes . In this way, almost all European vegetables found their way into the largest German colony, German East Africa , today Tanzania . From the Imperial Biological-Agricultural Institute Amani , in the Usambara Mountains , tomatoes, onions, carrots and watermelons spread throughout East Africa. The German colonial rulers led in East Africa a. a. also used Australian eucalyptus for medicinal purposes and studied native East African plants intensively. The research has been useful for running large sisal and cotton plantations . In the small town of Wilhelmstal (today Lushoto ) in the Usambara Mountains, East Africa, a herbarium corresponding to the Berlin Botanical Garden was laid out, of which only a small part still exists today. The Berlin collection was almost completely destroyed during the Second World War.
At that time, overseas, in addition to the Research Institute for Regional Culture in Victoria (Cameroon), the Biological-Agricultural Institute Amani ( German East Africa ), experimental gardens in Misahöhe and Sokodé ( Togoland ) and in Rabaul ( German New Guinea ) existed. An experimental garden in Apia ( Samoa ) was planned. The two large institutes in Victoria and Amani had made it their particular task to examine plantation crops such as coffee , cocoa or rubber for the possibility of their cultivation.
The central office in Berlin trained gardeners for the overseas research institutes. Furthermore, attempts were also made to investigate and promote the agricultural methods of the native population of the colonies.
After the First World War and the separation of the colonies from Germany as regulated in the Versailles Peace Treaty , the government saw no more reason for further activities of the central office. Wilhelm Solf commented on this in the following way: "We do not need any greenery for colonies that are in the moon."
Colonial botanical research by Hans-Joachim Schlieben 1930–1935 and Walter Domke 1938 led to the reopening of the central office on September 18, 1941.
On the night of March 1 to March 2, 1943, the herbarium of the Botanical Museum fell victim to the bombs, and with it the majority of the holdings of the Botanical Central Office for the German Colonies. This day is still referred to as the "Dahlem catastrophe".
After the Second World War , two works on the flora of two former German colonies in which the Botanical Garden Berlin had participated were published in Germany: Prodromus der Flora von Südwestafrika by Hermann Merxmüller and Flore analytique du Togo by Paul Hiepko and Hildemar Scholz .
To this day, the flora of Namibia is given special attention in the Botanical Garden Berlin ; so there are the largest non-African stocks of Welwitschia .
literature
- Bernhard Zepernick: The botanical central office for the German colonies . In: Ulrich van der Heyden, Joachim Zeller (Ed.): Colonial metropolis Berlin / Searching for traces . Berlin Edition, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-8148-0092-3 ; Pp. 107-111.