Rosa Luxemburg’s Herbarium

Rosa Luxemburg’s Herbarium presents the first-ever translation of the radical icon’s little-known collection of pressed plants, offering a fascinating window into her ecological perspective. This unique herbarium is contextualized with Luxemburg’s biographical details, letters, and a broader discussion of her enduring political legacy. The book examines her contributions to emancipatory anti-imperialist, decolonial, and eco-feminist movements, illuminating the global relevance of her ideas today. Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) was a leading figure in the European socialist movement, known for her internationalism and anti-militarism. Despite facing exile, political persecution, anti-Semitism, and gender discrimination as a Jewish, Polish, and disabled woman, Luxemburg’s work remains a powerful voice for liberation and change. Less widely known, however, is Luxemburg’s herbarium. Beginning in 1913, she compiled this collection as a young woman with an interest in botany, which she pursued in Zurich, where women were barred from studying in Poland. She continued to collect plants until her assassination by the Freikorps in 1919. Even while imprisoned, Luxemburg had plants sent to her cell, illustrating her lifelong connection to nature despite the political turmoil around her. Her herbarium offers a feminist, decolonial eco-Marxist critique of botany and conservationism—historically colonial and bourgeois institutions—and reimagines nature preservation beyond elitist, racially exclusive frameworks.