In contrast to many other biological disciplines the place and date of birth of extranuclear genetics can exactly been defined. The birthplace is Germany, and the date of birth is the spring of the year 1909. In Volume 1, issue No. 3, of the "Zeitschrift für induktive Abstammungs- und Vererbungslehre" (the world-wide first international journal of genetics) two papers were published back-to-back, which are the basis of extranuclear genetics (Figure 1). These papers reported the first cases of non-Mendelian (nowadays: extranuclear) inheritance of leaf variegations in higher plants.