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Herbarium

Luxemburg collected plant specimens from 1913 up to her death. She had a lifelong interest in botany and the natural world. This was especially true when she was isolated during her imprisonments, during which time working on the herbarium was critical to her wellbeing, an escape from a harsh reality, and a connection to the outside world. Holger Politt, one of the editors of the 2016 book, Rosa Luxemburg: Herbarium, said, "Collecting and identifying plants helped her hold on to sanity. It was therapeutic to her; she couldn't have coped without it".

Luxemburg's personal herbarium, which comprises 18 notebooks, is placed at the Archive of Modern Records in Warsaw, Poland. It contains 377 different plant specimens that she collected or that were sent to her by friends and acquaintances, and are mostly of cultivated and common species. Each sheet features one to three different plants, which are identified using German and Latin species names and family names, and often also have handwritten botanical descriptions, as well as the collection location and date. Luxemburg collected the plants from a range of places, including the Alps, the Sudety Mountains, and also in or near the prisons in Berlin, Wronki, and Wrocław (Breslau). The latter include plants from the prison vegetable garden or prison flowerbeds which she herself had planted.