Subproject A - The plant collections of the Moravian Church
| Project management: | Dr. Sarah Wagner Chair of Botany, TUD Dresden University of Technology |
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| Team: | Uta Koschmieder, Dr. Frank Müller, Dr. Lena Frenzke Chair of Botany, TUD Dresden University of Technology |
The Moravian Church as a global missionary movement illustrates the close connection between Christian mission and colonialism. As outstanding observers, its members were also botanically active and left behind floras and herbarium specimens of great importance for botany today. Using the example of preserved specimens in the herbarium of the TU Dresden, the potential of linking the digitization of natural history collections with cultural science network analysis to answer current research questions in the interdisciplinary context of collecting is demonstrated and the university collection is introduced to new research approaches.
The oldest natural history collection of the Moravian Church was created in Barby from 1750 onwards. Of these, 1,260 plant specimens have been preserved in Dresden. They were processed, for example, with C. v. Linné and, together with duplicates in other herbaria, demonstrate the close links between the Moravian scientists and important scholars of their time. There are a further 5,000 specimens from the 19th century relating to the Moravian Church in Dresden.
The aim of the project is to identify and catalog these documents and to determine the historical contexts in which they were found and the names of collectors. The digital representation of the botanical network using digital humanities methods and the creation of an expandable digital lexicon of all persons active in the natural history of the Moravian Church will serve as a basis for other natural history collections to contextualize their holdings.
As a result of the project, all research data will be available in relevant botanical databases and form the basis for reconstructing the distribution of plant species before the time of European industrialization. Publications in scientific journals and conference presentations will communicate the results in the context of botany and the cultural sciences. A further aim is to transfer methods and techniques of collection conservation and management developed in the project to the entire collection of the Herbarium Dresdense after the end of the project.