Carl Christian Gmelin - Forethinker of Bioeconomy
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Climate change has reached public attention as well as the need to render economy more sustainable. Plants are crucial for this so-called Bioeconomy and the KIT is very active here. However, few know that this topic was already addressed in Karlsruhe prior to the foundations of the university. Carl Christian Gmelin (1762-1837) was not ounly founding the Natural History Museum and directing the Botanical Gardens in Karlsruhe, but collected in his book "Nothhülfe gegen Mangel aus Mißwachs, ein botanischer Ratgeber" (First Aid against Poverty due to Misharvest, a Botanical Guide) published in 1817 numerous innovative ideas, how novel use of regional wild plants can help to cope with the consequences of climatic challenges. Reason was the "year without summer" in 1816, when, due to a gigantic volcanic erruption in Indonesia, Europe suffered from gigantic misharvests. Many of the ideas proposed by Gmelin are currently re-addressed. Josef Franz from the Association Botanischer Garten am KIT e.V. has, together with the Joseph Gottlieb Kölreuter Institute for Plant Sciences, the KIT Archive, and State Natural History Museum uncovered exciting finds that do not only highlight the botanic, but also the societal aspects of climate change, such as poverty and migration, projecting the experiences from the early 19th century directly into our times.. |
