The origins of everyday things
Where coffee, cotton and rubber come from.
The Loki Schmidt Haus is a small University of Hamburg museum at the entrance to its botanical garden, devoted to one defined subject: useful plants โ every plant humans use for food, medicine, fibre or dye. It is named for Loki Schmidt, the botanist and species conservation campaigner who was Chancellor Helmut Schmidt's wife, and who spent her life campaigning to preserve Germany's wild plants โ a figure well loved in Germany for that work rather than merely for her husband's office. The exhibits explain where everyday things come from: cotton, coffee, cocoa, spices, rubber and medicines, and how these plants moved between continents and changed economies and societies. The museum is very small โ under an hour โ but it complements the neighbouring botanical garden, which is the larger destination, and entry is cheap.
Where coffee, cotton and rubber come from.
Campaigns to preserve Germany's wild plants.
Ohnhorststrasse 18, 22609 Hamburg
With the garden, without hesitation. The museum is very small and does not on its own justify a forty-five-minute journey out to Klein Flottbek in the city's west. But the adjoining botanical garden is free and covers twenty-five hectares, so the sensible arrangement is to make that the destination and the museum a short stop at its entrance.
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