Ausstellungskatalog - Botanischer Garten und Botanisches Museum ...

Präsentieren und Erklären 1910 – 2010 · Presenting and Explaining 1910 – 2010
First Delight, then Instruct*: Visit to Dahlem, 1950 – 2010
It would take almost 20 years before the traces of the Second World
War had been entirely erased from the garden. The core of the Botanic
Garden in Dahlem retained its former appearance, but there
was considerable change in the peripheral areas. A first step towards
ensuring the future of teaching was the reconstruction of
the systematic section in 1947. Alongside the scientific mission,
however, a new role was willingly embraced: through the insular
position of West Berlin the garden had become a site of recreation
and edification for the local population and thus had a different
social function to fulfil from that of the pre-war period. 400,000
visitors and 1000 school classes with a total of 25,000 pupils were
the proud statistic of 1953, and one that changed little up to the
fall of the Wall. The museum, which reopened in May 1963 after
a longer period of rebuilding, could be visited daily apart from
Mondays.
As a post-war newspaper report announced, ‘It is springtime in
Berlin when guided tours begin in the Botanic Garden’, and in
order to make the month of March yet more alluring thousands of
crocus and narcissi bulbs were planted on the great meadows in the
garden from 1961 onwards. Once the Great Tropical House was
reopened in 1968, a visit to it formed part of the Christmas holiday
programme in Berlin and was recommended in city guidebooks
Sonntagsspaziergang im Botanischen Garten um 1960. Postkarte. Heimatverein
Steglitz e.V.
Malkurs im Botanischen Garten 1994. BGBM, Archiv.
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as a remedy against winter depression.
From 1976 attention began to be drawn to particularly noteworthy
plants by means of red dots. The garden’s educational programme
expanded in 1978, at first through the employment of
freelancers who offered additional guided tours on the most diverse
topics. In 1983 an aroma and touch garden was opened with the
principal aim of allowing blind and partially sighted visitors to
experience the world of plants. In 1988 the ‘Botanikschule’ was
founded, an educational information centre which is still operating
successfully to this day. Finally, in 1996, a new, more publicpleasing
physic garden was opened with 230 labelled medicinal
plants. Engler’s recreations of natural landscapes both in the open
and in the glasshouses remain favourite visitor attractions, but
increasing attempts have been made since 1990 to access new
audiences with all manner of activities and events. The garden’s
educational work today concentrates more and more on making
visitors aware of the vital importance of plant diversity and how it
is being threatened through climate change and man’s exploitation
of nature. MH
* ‘First Delight, then Instruct’ was the phrase used by Karl Friedrich
Schinkel in 1828 when conveying to Wilhelm and Alexander
von Humboldt the functions of a museum.