Tropical Botany in Exile: Mona Lisa Steiner (1915-2000)

In 1938, the Austrian botanist Mona Lisa Steiner (1915-2000) fled to the Philippines to escape National Socialist persecution, where she managed to build up a new existence and to establish herself within a few years as an expert on the tropical flora of the Philippines. After her re-migration to Austria in 1965, Steiner described her escape to the Pacific island-nation as a botanical expedition, which resulted in the set-up of a research location with corresponding institutional, personal and material resources. During the second third of the 20th century, research on the physiology and biodiversity of plants of tropical and subtropical climatic or geographical regions in the metropolises of science depended mainly on sources attained from botanic expeditions, while some research institutions at the periphery, such as botanical gardens, allowed intrinsic research on endemic plants in their natural habitats. In both cases, tropical botany functioned as a framework for the global transfer of scientific and cultural knowledge and practices, which also had a key impact in many other spheres of society. The image of the profitable scientific, political, cultural and economic exploitation of nature was marked by the arrangement of plants in so-called taxonomic families that were also characterized by standardised knowledge of their medical, nutritional and economical utility. Tropical botany, within the international and interdisciplinary network of research and in the context of a cross-cultural transfer of knowledge beyond the boundaries of disciplines and countries in the era of World War II (WWII), post-war and decolonisation, thus followed different research agendas and activities in the centers and at the periphery of science. This can be followed and found reflected in the scientific work of Mona Lisa Steiner. But, as her scientific working style in theory and practice may also owe much to the specific historical, social, gender related and political context of her education and professional development in the era of the Second World War and the exile of science, her activities should also be looked at in a wider perspective. Thus, the planned research project focuses on an epistemological analysis of tropical botanical research and the polyvalent phenomena of global knowledge and plant transfer in the second third of the 20th century, and does so against the background of specific perspectives of gender in science, science in exile as well as the history of women in exile. The key questions of the proposed project are: How did the global transfer of knowledge and practice influence the agendas and foci of tropical botanical research of an Austrian botanist in the Philippines? How were these developments dynamically linked with the epistemic, political, social and cultural shifts in 20th century history of science?

The "Anschluss" from Austria to the German 'Reich' forced many Jewish scientists to establish their research location in distant places. The Philippines, where American expansion had created a large demand for experts in tropical plants and environments, offered botanists an excellent opportunity to work in a field that has been termed tropical botany. In the Philippines, this field had been established by American botanists by linking scientific, commercial, and military studies, which in turn influenced the way they thought about the tropical world.The aim of this three year Austrian Science Fund (FWF) funded research project was to explore these processes through a detailed reconstruction of the research practices, ideas and concepts of two tropical botanists from different scientific, cultural, and political backgrounds: the American plant geographer Elmer D. Merrill (18761956), holding a governmental research position in the Philippines between 19021923, and Austrian plant physiologist Mona Lisa Steiner née Lindenberg (19152000), who had fled Vienna to Manila in 1938 to escape National Socialist persecution. Steiner's and Merrill's manuscripts, papers, correspondence, pictures, and tapes held at Austrian, Philippine, and American institutions provide an excellent opportunity to understand how their (neo-)colonial and migration experience impacted on their research.The main result of our study is that both scientists' experiences and engagement with tropical plants in the Pacific region shaped their ideas about issues of geography and identity. This in turn found reflection in their views on where they themselves stood in a rapidly changing world. For instance, after a period of collecting and exploring, both botanists focused their research interests towards questions of plant migration and the origin of (tropical) plants. In particular, Merrill conceptualized a "transition zone" of migrating species between Asia and Australia and was one of the first to suggest that the Philippines and surrounding islands constituted a biogeographical region of their own: "Wallacea". Investigating his research into plant migration, stunning conceptual correlations with the far-reaching geopolitical changes in the Pacific region became apparent: e.g. Wallaces line, formulated under British influence, was translated into a region (Wallacea) that was determined by the composition of flora on American territory the Philippines. Ultimately identifying herself with Merrill's role of an explorer and his ideas, Steiner based her later work mainly on his research. In contrast to Merrill, though, she suggested that the transplantation of horticulturally and agriculturally useful plants "enrich[ed]" rather than disturbed the local "primeval flora". Both concepts emerged not out of direct observation of nature, but of the tropical botanists' continuous work of situating plants within their 'native' geographical region at a time when frontiers were in flux.This project, sponsored by the FWF between 2012 and 2016, received an award (Bader- Preis für die Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften for 2009) and was supported by two further grants (Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies for 2014, Smithsonian Institution Postdoctoral Fellowship for 2014).