Off to botany: Narcissus and the Tulipan

Anyone who was lucky enough to have been condemned to learn a lot by heart at school might have had verses from the song “Geh aus mein Herz und sucht Freud” running through their heads again last Easter weekend.

For example this one: "Look at the beautiful ornamental gardens and see how they have adorned themselves for me and you." From a phenological point of view, the line only fits into these spring days: "Narcissus and the Tulipan, they dress much more beautifully than Solomon's silk."

Ulf von Rauchhaupt

Editor in the “Science” section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.

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What reason might the songwriter have had for emphasizing these two plant genera in such a way?

First, maybe a garden-historical one.

The 17th century was exactly the time when cultivated forms of representatives of the genera

and

conquered the flower beds of Central Europe.

In the case of the tulips, which originally came from the Orient, this led to the first well-documented speculative bubble in economic history in the Netherlands, which burst in February 1637.

When “Geh aus mein Herz” was first published in 1653, however, tulips were still established status symbols in the homes of the nobility and wealthy citizens.

Jesus was not a botanist

But does the line also have a theological meaning?

After all, the comparison with King Solomon's wardrobe is reminiscent of a verse from the Sermon on the Mount: "And why do you care about clothes?

Behold the lilies of the field, how they grow.

They don't bother and they don't spin.

But I tell you, not even Solomon in all his glory was dressed like one of them” (Matt. 6:28f).

This passage has given Bible botanists much headache.

What flowers did Jesus mean by “lilies of the field”?

The Greek "ta krina tou agrou" in the original of the Gospel was already translated into Latin as "lilia agri" in antiquity, and for the singular krinon and lilium dictionaries contain the information that it is about the white lily (

), which was actually already cultivated in antiquity, but was only assigned its species name in 1753 by Carl von Linné.

He should have been guided by Theophrastus, who in his 300 B.C.

However, in the botanical work that originated in the 19th century BC, not only “krinon” was used for the lily, but also the word “leirion”, which, according to philologists, he used elsewhere to

mean representatives of the genus

Unlike tulips, however, these are not lily plants.

But Jesus was no botanist, and the Sermon on the Mount - like the whole Bible - is not a natural history book.

Attempts to determine the “lilies of the field” are therefore irrelevant, even if one argues that bulb flowers only bloom for a short time in Israel and are therefore a special reminder of the transience of external splendor.

The point of the text is already in the next verse: "If God clothes the grass in the field that is today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven - how then you first?" That fits more with the wild beauty of the poppy than with it human discounts.

In fact, even with Paul Gerhardt, the garden ornament ultimately becomes an image for a creaturely aspect, namely the possibilities of the human being: "Lend,