Towards digitizing the botanical legacy of Fritz and Paul Sarasin in Basel and Zurich

Abstract

The botanical heritage of multitalented naturalists Paul Benedict (1856–1929) and Karl Friedrich (Fritz) (1859–1942) Sarasin of Basel is poorly known. The second-degree cousins from Basel inherited great wealth, which funded their expeditions to the tropics in India, Sri Lanka, Sulawesi, and New Caledonia. Both were doctors in zoology with interdisciplinary interests from geography and anthropology to botany. They mixed race theories with traditional descriptions of biodiversity, blurring boundaries between anthropology and natural sciences. With the help of the local colonial governments where they travelled, they avidly collected many thousands of natural history objects and human artefacts, now kept in institutions across Europe.