From 4-6 December 2024, the workshop Georg Schweinfurth's collection of plant remains from Ancient Egypt revisited and (re-)contextualized, organized by the Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin, Freie Universität Berlin, and the Institute of Egyptology at Freie Universität Berlin, and kindly sponsored by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, took place at the Engler Villa.

Georg Schweinfurth, born in Riga in 1836 and died in Berlin in 1925, was a Baltic German botanist, plant geographer and Africa researcher who not only researched and published on botany, but also published in the fields of geography, ethnology, anthropology and Egyptology. Schweinfurth's cultural-historical collection of 392 plant remains from ancient Egyptian tombs as well as the remaining parts of his botanical collections and botanical drawings are preserved in the Botanical Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin.

The aim of the workshop was to use a multi-perspective and transdisciplinary approach to lay the foundations for the preservation and re-presentation of Schweinfurth's culturally and historically significant collection of plant remains from Egyptian tombs

In particular, a network was to be established that would

1. make visible the collections of ancient Egyptian plant remains created by Georg Schweinfurth's work, which are now spread across various collections and museums,

2. enable an exchange and comparison of information on the holdings and

3. form the basis for future research.

The starting point was the collection held in the Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin. In line with Schweinfurth's wide-ranging areas of interest, cultural history, the history of science, cultural anthropology, art history, museology and Egyptology were addressed. Specialists from Egypt, Great Britain, Switzerland, Italy, the USA and Germany took part in the workshop. The publication of the conference papers is in preparation and planned for the end of 2025.