Carl Friedrich Rudloff

Carl Friedrich Ludwig Rudloff (born December 26, 1899 in Voerde (today in Ennepetal ), † April 16, 1962 in Velbert ) was a German biologist and fruit growing scientist.

Life

Carl Friedrich Rudloff first attended the Horticultural College in Köstritz in 1923 , which he left as a state-certified master horticulturalist. From 1924 he studied economics and biology at the University of Jena.

In 1926 he took up a position as a volunteer assistant at the Institute of Botany at the Thuringian State University of Jena . In 1928 he received his doctorate under Otto Renner with a thesis on the genetic and cytological examination of evening primrose . He then worked for a year at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Heredity Research in Berlin-Dahlem. After the establishment of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Breeding Research in Müncheberg, he was appointed head of the fruit breeding department by its director Erwin Baur in 1929.

In 1932 Rudloff was co-founder and organizer of the Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft für Obstzuchtung, of which he has been managing director ever since. In 1934 he received a call for a full professor at the teaching and research institute Geisenheim , which he took up on April 10, 1935. As the successor to Franz Muth (1869–1941), Rudloff was director of the Geisenheim establishment until the end of the war in 1945.

Rudloff was considered an excellent organizer and practitioner. The focus of his scientific work was primarily in the field of horticultural breeding research. During the course of the general National Socialist striving for a high degree of self-sufficiency with food, this was also strongly promoted in Geisenheim by the Reich Research Service and the Reichsnährstand .

Under Rudloff as managing director, an institute for breeding research was set up in Geisenheim in 1934/35. The Institute for Reichsrebenzüchtung emerged from the vine breeding station in 1938. In addition, a department for medicinal and aromatic plants was set up at the university. Furthermore, an institute for silk cultivation was opened, whose research results on silk production under German climatic conditions should enable self-sufficiency with parachute silk for military purposes.

In 1935, Heinrich Birk in Geisenheim developed the so-called cardboard vines process, which served to simplify potted vines. Together with Hugo Schanderl and Georg Bosian (1902–1993), Rudloff was able to dispel the winegrowers' concerns about this cultivation process through scientific studies, so that the cardboard grape branches could establish themselves in viticulture.

In 1937 the Prussian Vine Refinement Commission , which had been based in Geisenheim since it was founded in 1890, was dissolved. Instead, Reichsrebenzüchtung was founded, which was withdrawn from the Geisenheimer Anstalt association just a year later. The technical department of the Geisenheim vine grafting station was closed, but the scientific department was continued.

As early as 1941, teaching in Geisenheim came to a standstill due to the war. In addition, the parks around Villa Monrepos were assigned to the Institute for Plant Breeding as usable space. To this end, large parts of the horticultural facilities were broken up, which led to a violent conflict between Rudloff as director of the Geisenheimer Anstalt and the garden architect Hans Hasler, who tried to preserve the park that had grown over decades.

At the end of the war, Rudloff finally lost the professorship and was also dismissed as director of the Geisenheim Institute. It was not until 1952 that he was appointed full professor for fruit, wine and vegetable growing at the Hohenheim Agricultural University. He held the professorship until his death in 1962.

The focus of Rudloff's scientific work was primarily on the fundamental questions of flowering phenology and the fertilization conditions in fruit trees. With his work he made important contributions to the development of systematic, scientific fruit breeding in Germany. In Geisenheim, flower biological studies were carried out on fruit trees every year, the results of which Rudloff and Hugo Schanderl published in 1934 in the book The Fertilization Biology of Fruit Trees. published, which appeared in three editions.

On April 16, 1962, he died of a heart attack while on vacation in Velbert / Rhineland.

Publications

From 1936 Rudloff was editor of the series Fundamentals and Advances in Horticulture and Viticulture at Eugen Ulmer.

• together with Hugo Schanderl : The fertilization biology of the fruit trees - a pocket book for fruit growing practice and for the enthusiast, at the same time a textbook for use in horticultural schools. Rudolf Bechtold Publishing House, Wiesbaden 1934
• together with Hans Stubbe : Mutation experiments with Oenothera Hookeri. In: Flora. Volume 29, Issue 4, pp. 347-362
• together with Martin Schmidt: Outline of heredity for gardeners. Volume 1 of the series Basics and Advances in Horticulture and Viticulture. Published by Eugen Ulmer, Stuttgart 1935
• Report of the experimental and research institute for vine, fruit and horticultural trees, Geisenheim am Rhein for the financial year 1934 and 1935. Paul Parey publishing house, Berlin 1936
• together with Hugo Schanderl: Fertilization-biological studies on plums, plums, mirabelle plums and pure claws. In: Die Gartenbauwissenschaft 10 (5-6), 1937
• What you need to know about the fruits of the fruit plants. Eugen Ulmer publisher, Stuttgart 1940
• together with Nikolaus Weger and Walter Herbst: Weather conditions and phenology of the flowering phase of the pear tree. Scientific treatises of the Reichsamt für Wetterdienst, Verlag J. Springer, Berlin 1940
• Experimental and research institute for wine, fruit and horticulture Geisenheim am Rhein. Annual scientific report 1938/39. Reprint of the Agricultural Yearbooks, Volume 90, Reichsnährstand, Berlin 1940
• Experimental and research institute for viticulture and horticulture Geisenheim am Rhein. Annual scientific reports 1939 and 1940. Verlag von Eugen Ulmer, Stuttgart 1941
• together with Hugo Schanderl: The fertilization biology of fruit plants and their application in practice. Volume 64 of the series Basics and Advances in Horticulture and Viticulture. Published by Eugen Ulmer, Stuttgart 1941
• as editor: Hohenheim State School for Horticulture and Horticulture. Development and activity 1952 - 1958. 1958

Web links

• Website of the Society for the History of Wine eV

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c} Gerhard Troost : Rudloff, Carl Friedrich (1899-1962). Biography on the homepage of the Society for the History of Wine, accessed on March 10, 2016
2. ↑ Carl Friedrich Ludwig Rudloff: On the knowledge of the Oenothera purpurata Klebahn and Oenothera rubricaulis Klebahn: Genetic and cytological investigations. Dissertation, Gebrüder Bornträger-Verlag, Leipzig 1929.
3. ^ ^{A b} Gerd Däumel : Geisenheim 1872 to 1972 - Hundred years of garden architecture and landscape maintenance. Reprint from the magazine "Das Gartenamt." Issue 8/1972 and 9/1972
4. ↑ 140 years of Geisenheim as a teaching and research location - a historical look back. ( Memento of the original from March 9, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The  archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the homepage of the Geisenheim University of Applied Sciences, accessed March 9, 2016
5. ↑ ^{a b} Helmut Becker : 75 years of vine refinement in Germany - lecture on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Geisenheim / Rheingau vine refinement station on January 20, 65 , p. 21, accessed on the homepage of the Heinrich Birk Society on March 9th 2016
6. ↑ ^{a b} Rudloff, Carl Friedrich. In: Wolfgang Böhm: Biographical manual for the history of crop production . Verlag Walter de Gruyter, Munich 1997, p. 267