Knowledge in 2D
Historical Treasures Rediscovered
How it all began
Teaching charts were central educational tools in schools and universities for over a century, up until the 1980s. Today, in an age of digital displays, interactive tools, and moving images, they have largely disappeared from everyday teaching. While their immediate instructional value has diminished, this shift also opens up new possibilities: their historical charm and the stories they tell offer fresh perspectives. What stories can be uncovered? How can we preserve, study, and perhaps even repurpose this collection?
A selection of teaching charts
At the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, a large, mostly unexplored collection of such teaching charts lay in storage, a cultural treasure waiting to be rediscovered. It seemed only natural to ask: wouldn’t it be exciting to finally unpack, spread out, and examine all of these charts? Even today, they can play an important role: as illustrative and teaching materials in higher education, as sources for research in the history of science and education, or as inspiration for creative processes in education, public engagement, or the creative industries.
My name is Jutta Helbig, and at the Museum für Naturkunde I am, among other things, responsible for the protection of cultural heritage. For a long time, I have been committed to systematically cataloguing, documenting, and understanding these charts. The project became urgent because the collection must be relocated as part of planned construction work within the framework of the Future Plan, prompting me to think intensively about what a meaningful starting point might look like.
Dr. Oliver Zauzig and Dr. Jutta Helbig
Some ideas do not emerge at a desk, but over a quick coffee in between, this was one of them. At a small coffee stand on the Campus Nord, I met Oliver Zauzig, Collection Coordinator at Humboldt University. The extensive zoological teaching chart collection at HU sparked my hope for new impulses for our own holdings. A digital meeting initiated by Oliver with colleagues from the university and the museum helped move the idea forward. The decisive impulse finally came from Prof. John Nyakatura: “Why don’t you do a seminar?”
Back at the small coffee stand on Campus Nord, the decision was quickly made: yes, we are doing a seminar!
From Concept to Teaching Format
My name is Oliver Zauzig, and I am the Collection Coordinator at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. My responsibilities include making university collections visible and transforming them into innovative teaching formats. Within the interdisciplinary elective program, we regularly develop courses that offer students a cross-disciplinary perspective on scientific practices.
In this context, the seminar “Knowledge in 2D” was created. It was aimed at students from all fields of study and provided the opportunity to examine historical objects through the lens of inquiry-based learning. The goal was to explore new perspectives, methods, and approaches for working with collection holdings.
Zentrum für Kulturtechnik, Humboldt-Universität
In the winter semester 2024/25, students from biology, physics, archaeology, and cultural studies participated in our seminar. Following a theoretical introduction at the Center for Cultural Techniques (Zentrum für Kulturtechnik), they worked in intensive block sessions with original materials from the museum’s teaching chart collection. The high level of engagement led to additional practical sessions, during which interdisciplinary teams deepened their projects and developed ideas for future uses.
A Space for Discoveries
Earlier attempts had been made to catalogue parts of the teaching chart collection, but a complete overview remained out of reach, simply because there had been no space to systematically examine the charts. Only the clearing of a storage room made it possible to bring a larger portion of the collection together in one place. Although not all charts could be accommodated there and some had to remain in off-site storage. The new room offered, for the first time, a realistic opportunity to view the collection as a whole.
Seminar room
Before us lay a heterogeneous “patchwork” of formats, conditions, and content: rolled, stacked, and interlocked charts. Amid bright paper and dark canvas, the first treasures began to emerge: historical prints, hand-drawn illustrations, and delicate color lithographs. No overall picture was yet discernible, and so the seminar began with a mixture of uncertainty and anticipation. No one knew exactly what to expect, and it was precisely this uncertainty that made the experience so compelling.
The Seminar gains Momentum
After a safety briefing, the hands-on work could begin. The first charts from the late 19th century made the students aware of the valuable objects they were encountering. With great respect but without hesitation, they unrolled, hung up, or spread out additional examples on the floor. It quickly became clear that the first step would be a rough content-based sorting, organized by subject areas and thematic fields.
Sorting the teaching charts
Looking at a chart
Arranging the rolled-up charts
Students examine charts
Cutting the straps for hanging
Attaching the straps to the chart
Rolling up a chart
Sorting the teaching charts
Experimental Learning
How can historical teaching charts be scientifically documented? Which metadata are necessary to make them searchable later? And how can the workflow be structured in a meaningful way? The students engaged with these questions throughout the seminar. Deliberately, the course avoided rigid guidelines. Participants developed their own solutions, thereby stepping directly into the perspective of professional collection management.
Photographer Eran Wolff explains the photo station
During group work, workflows were designed, tested, discarded, and refined. Step by step, the students developed their own procedures, which were then compared and optimized for efficiency and practicality. Only the operation of the photography station was demonstrated by a museum expert. All other process steps were devised by the students themselves and formally established together with the seminar instructors.
Teamwork as Learning Experience
When the students implemented the workflows at the workstations, new questions arose that were solved collaboratively. It took some time for the processes to run smoothly. Teams quickly formed and often remained intact throughout the seminar. With dedication and meticulous care, each chart was documented, measured, described, and digitized.
Restoration exercise (not on the original)
Holding the chart so that it does not roll up
A teaching chart is being measured
Photo with inventory number in the image
Full of enthusiasm: holding up the chart
A chart on an easel is photographed
Teaching chart showing a brown coal forest
Conditions, Damage, and Perspectives
Many charts were soiled, so gloves and masks were distributed at the outset, and the objects were cleaned using a specialized vacuum cleaner that does not release particles into the room air.
Years of storage in different building areas had resulted in a wide range of damage: tears, holes, color loss from old labels, foxing, water damage, and even mold growth. Charts that were heavily moldy were not digitized for safety reasons; instead, they were immediately rolled up and stored separately.
Inspection of badly damaged charts
Heavily damaged chart with fly motif
Some charts were so severely damaged that restoration would have been neither economically feasible nor realistic. Nevertheless, these objects were initially set aside, as they might still serve as material for future projects. Why not develop an artistic or educational format that specifically engages with these damaged originals? Even museum remnants can possess value and evoke a unique aesthetic appeal.
Visiting the Seminar
Some university collections also hold extensive teaching chart collections. In Halle, for example, there are over 2,000 items. We therefore invited Frank Steinheimer and his colleague Arila Perl (Zoological Collection Halle), as well as Michael Markert from the University of Jena, who is deeply engaged in the study of teaching charts as a research subject and brings extensive expertise to this field. Also joining us was Gerhard Scholtz, who contributed to the seminar with great commitment from the very beginning and, for many years, curated the zoology teaching chart collection at Humboldt University.
Dr. Steinheimer explains details about the nature on a chart
Group discussion about the seminar and achievements
Dr. Steinheimer shows details on a tablet
Dr. Steinheimer, Arila Perl, and Dr. Markert
Dr. Giere, Dr. Steinheimer, Arila Perl and Prof. Scholtz
When Students just keep going
By the time digitalization was picking up pace, the official block sessions had already ended, yet the students wanted to continue working on “their collection”. Their initiative was so strong that we offered three additional block sessions to allow them to continue and deepen the work they had started. The teams used this extra time with noticeable enthusiasm to further refine their workflows and capture as much material as possible.
We were particularly pleased by the request of a participant’s friend, who was a student at FU and not enrolled in our seminar, to join the additional sessions. Her participation demonstrated how positively the seminar was received and the impact it had already begun to have beyond our own university.
Nathalie Weisbach documents a teaching chart
In the extended research seminar, a total of 267 teaching charts were recorded and digitized. The following examples show what can be discovered on a single chart and the surprising insights that can emerge from it.
What Teaching Charts tell us
Teaching charts contain a wealth of fascinating information. They can serve as a starting point for the scholarly documentation of a collection, as a source of inspiration for research projects, or as a stimulus for artistic engagement.
Teaching charts open up a surprisingly broad range of research perspectives. From the viewpoint of the history of education and science, they provide insights into changing teaching methods, curricula, and institutions. From an art-historical and visual-studies perspective, they are of interest because of their styles, materials, and color concepts, ranging from schematic reduction to elaborate artistic execution. Beyond this, they also offer points of departure for political and contemporary history, as some charts reveal underlying ideological interpretative frameworks.
Unrealistic depiction of a coal forest
From a sociological perspective on science, teaching charts illustrate how knowledge is visualized, legitimized, and transmitted. Specific modes of representation shape what is regarded as valid or “true” knowledge and continue to resonate within collective memory. Teaching charts are therefore far more than instructional media: they connect aesthetic, pedagogical, political, and social dimensions and convey a multifaceted picture of the scientific culture of their time of origin.
They can even bring a murder case to light, or serve as templates for new tattoos. But see for yourselves:
Discover, compare, marvel
The following image series presents a cross-section of historical teaching charts that were documented by the students in the seminar. It shows a variety of content, authorship, publishers, topics, and material qualities. Definitely worth a closer look.
Learnings
The seminar was an experiment and a complete success. At the beginning, no one knew which items would appear or what condition they were in. Yet the students approached the originals with great respect and a high degree of initiative. They showed no hesitation in handling the objects and quickly developed a strong sense of responsibility for the collection. With no prior experience and coming from four different disciplines, they collaboratively compiled a field catalogue and photographed 267 teaching charts on both sides, producing a total of 534 digital files. This was an impressive achievement. Particularly noteworthy were their problem-solving skills and flexibility in dealing with unexpected situations.
Teaching charts with labels and inventory numbers
Their engagement attracted considerable attention: the museum documented the seminar on social media, scholars from other universities came to visit, and the feedback was consistently positive. As a final step, the students developed concepts for the future use of the collection, creative, practice-oriented, and academically sound. In this way, the seminar made a decisive contribution to preserving a collection that would otherwise have remained unseen and vulnerable over the long term, enabled by the students’ exceptional commitment and sense of responsibility.
And then there were ...
…additional teaching charts in the museum’s herbarium. After the seminar had ended and a photography station had been dismantled, space became available to transfer further charts. Countless rolled teaching charts, in some cases oversized, stood in wooden racks, long overlooked.
Additional teaching charts
Wooden boxes with additional charts
With the energetic support of dedicated colleagues, the transport was accomplished. But what was inside the large wooden crates that were also stored in the herbarium, stacked alongside the charts? I had always imagined that they might contain a long-forgotten dinosaur skeleton, but things turned out differently: they contained even more teaching charts.
Thirty to forty charts per crate, presumably unique items from various institutes. These, too, were transferred to the storage facility. According to an initial estimate, around 1,500 teaching charts are now stored there.
There is, therefore, still much work ahead of us and very much left to discover.
Contributors
Seminar Convenor: Dr. Jutta Helbig / Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, Dr. Oliver Zauzig / Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Students (alphabetical order): Luise Both, Nikolas Gkazonis, Bent Kosler, Julius May, Lindsay Mielke, Frederike Past, Laureen Rossoll, Sixten Stumm, Till Trabhart, Kaya Walek, Max Wanet, Nathalie Weisbach (FU Berlin, guest participant since January 2025)
Guest Contributors: Prof. Dr. Gerhard Scholtz / Humboldt University of Berlin, Dr. Michael Markert / Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Dr. Frank Steinheimer & Arila Perl / Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg
Acknowledgements: Dr. Frederik Berger, Dr. Mareike Petersen, Dr. Peter Giere, Mandy Ullmann, Bernhard Schurian, Eran Wolff, Andreas Schnock, Edda Aßel, Jenny Pohl, Dirk Eckert, Roman Neumeier, Erik Lehmann und Marc Jerusel
Concept and Implementation of the Media Story: Text and Concept: Dr. Jutta Helbig Idea, Technical Implementation and Production (Pageflow): Tina Schneider Text Contribution: Marc Jerusel Editorial Team: Dr. Jutta Helbig, Dr. Oliver Zauzig, Tina Schneider Video Contributions: Prof. Dr. Gerhard Scholtz, Dr. Frank Steinheimer, Frederike Past, Max Wanet, Nikolas Gkazonis and Julius May Photographic Documentation: Eran Wolff, Dr. Jutta Helbig, Dr. Oliver Zauzig and Tina Schneider
Image Credits and Notes: Digitized images: Photographs were taken by the students during the seminar; copyright for the digitized panels is held by the Museum für Naturkunde. Note: One photograph used in the chapter “What Teaching Panels Tell” was qualitatively enhanced with the assistance of artificial intelligence.