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Colonialism on the window sill: Discover plants in the World Museum Vienna!
Discover the exhibition "Colonialism at the Window Board" in the Vienna World Museum from May 28, 2025 - plants and history united.
Colonialism on the window sill: Discover plants in the World Museum Vienna!
on May 28, 2025 opened in World Museum Vienna The exhibition "Colonialism on the windowsill". In this show, the co-curator Bettina Zorn is called the history of Geranie, also called pelargonia, and take up the topic of biopiracy. The aim of the exhibition is to make the global interdependencies, the cultural appropriation and exploitation of plants visible.
The exhibition shows a total of ten popular room and balcony plants that come from non-European habitats. In addition to living plants, historical objects and image material are presented. Visitors can look forward to large historical illustrations, pressed plants and numerous books that invite you to read.
focus on biopiracy
One of the central examples in the exhibition is the plant pelargonium sidoides , which is used in South Africa to treat respiratory diseases. However, a German pharmaceutical company registered patents on this plant, which means that the local population remained excluded from the financial profits.
There are also cacti, USAMBARACHEN and aloe vera among the plants shown, which often came to Europe with ethnographic objects in the luggage of European expeditions from the 18th and 19th centuries. There were considerable transport problems, because many plants dried up, rotten or frozen during the long shipping trips. In order to counteract these challenges, the British doctor Nathaniel invented a mobile miniature glass house that significantly simplified the transport of the plants.A look at the story
An example of the vegetable history of discovery provides the Austrian doctor and botanist Friedrich Welwitsch, who researched in Angola for seven years. In 1859 he discovered a previously unknown plant near Cabo Negro. The Royal Botanic Gardens Kew achieved his report on this discovery in August 1860. 1862 Welwitsch sent material for the scientific description to Joseph Dalton Hooker and recommended the name Tumboa.
However,Hooker considered the name inappropriate and decided to name the plant after the European explorer. This happened in accordance with Welwitsch. The first description of this plant appeared in the 'Transactions of the Linnean Society', with almost 50 pages of text and 14 illustrations, including two in color. In Angola the plant is referred to as a n’umto, which means 'blunt', and it also has other names in different African languages.
welwitschien that can be over 1,000 years old have only two leaves that continue to grow on the ground while the tips die. These long-lasting plants, which hardly reach 1.50 meters, are naked-seed plants and are viewed as living fossils, since similar plants have been found in sediments that are over 100 million years old.
The exhibition in the World Museum will be shown by May 25, 2026. Admission is free, and opening times are daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Tuesday until 9 p.m., with exceptions on Monday.