Tulips originally come from Turkey, where they were highly valued in the Ottoman sultan's gardens. Constantinople, now Istanbul, was a thriving center of trade, culture and politics in the 16th century, and the city's magnificent gardens were richly decorated with tulips. The flower became a symbol of power and wealth and the sultans had a special fondness for it.
Turkey's 'Tulip Century' reached its peak at the beginning of the 18th century, and every spring under the full moon, Sultan Ahmed III held an impressive tulip festival in the palace gardens. However, these extravagant celebrations were also costly and contributed to the Sultan's eventual assassination by dissatisfied conspirators.
The Flemish nobleman Ogier de Busbecq, an envoy of the Austrian Habsburgs to the court of Süleyman I, played an important role in the spread of tulips in Europe. Busbecq was fascinated by the beauty of tulips and sent some of the flower bulbs to his friend, the botanist Carolus Clusius . Clusius, a renowned scholar and court botanist, was so enthusiastic about the exotic flowers that he grew them in the university's botanical garden. Thanks to the favorable climate and soil in the Netherlands, tulips thrived. Clusius thus laid the foundation for Dutch tulip breeding and cultivation.
In the 17th century, the tulip trade in the Netherlands experienced a real boom. Tulip mania, one of the first documented speculative bubbles, reached its peak when tulip bulb prices skyrocketed. There was a real trading frenzy, with people investing their entire wealth in buying and selling tulips. But the bubble finally burst in 1637, leading to a dramatic collapse of the tulip market and driving many investors to financial ruin.
Purple Velvet as a mural in combination with Lollipop
Today, tulips are popular worldwide due to their diversity and beauty, symbolizing love, beauty and spring. The romantic yet dramatic story of the Dutch tulip is therefore not just a story of flowers, but also of power, wealth, passion and even economic madness.
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