ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Gertrud Tobler-Wolff (1877-1948) and colonial botany in the Third Reich

• In Event: Unorthodox Women, Unorthodox Ideas in Modern Biological Research

English Abstract

This paper examines Gertrud Tobler-Wolff (1877-1948), a Jewish female botanist who worked at the Institute of Botany at the German Technical University of Dresden, headed by her husband Friedrich Tobler (1879–1957) from 1924 to 1946. While supporting her husband with her expertise, Tobler-Wolff conducted her own research projects not only in Germany, but also during research trips to Africa (Egypt, Tanzania and Cameroon), South America (especially Brazil and Mexico) and Turkey. The Toblers had begun researching useful plants in the former German colonies of East Africa (1912/13) according to their botanical and chemical performance parameters in order to subsequently determine possible technical and chemical uses. One of their main areas of research was rubber, which Tobler-Wolff had already begun in 1912/13 as the only woman at the Biological-Agricultural Institute in Amani (Tanzania). During this time, she was also probably the first woman to climb Kilimanjaro for botanical research and to document its vegetation in detail. While rubber remained a joint research project for the couple, Tobler-Wolff developed a separate interest in roots and kapok, which became one of her central research areas, the findings of which she also published independently. I argue that Tobler-Wolff’s research was caught between science and Nazi politics, especially because she was (officially) Jewish. Regardless of the political circumstances, she conducted research independently and alongside her husband, thereby building an unusual bridge between colonial botany and the armaments-related research of the Nazi system, which even led her to Auschwitz.

Author

• Dorit Maria Nicola Brixius, Dresden University of Technology