Annie Francé-Harrar

Annie Francé-Harrar (born December 2, 1886 in Munich , † January 23, 1971 in Hallein , Austria ) was an Austrian biologist and writer .

Francé-Harrar and her second husband Raoul Heinrich Francé created the scientific basis for humus and compost management , which she developed independently after his death in 1943. In the course of her life she wrote 47 books, around 5000 articles in the German-language press and gave over 500 lectures and lectures, including those in radio broadcasts.

Life

Annie Harrar was born on December 2, 1886 in Munich as the daughter of the Polish painter Aleksander Sochaczewski and a German . Already at a young age she combined her artistic and literary talent with technical research. She studied biology and medicine in Munich. The first printed work appeared in 1911 and describes in verse the life of women over the centuries. In the same year she got her first marriage, which was dissolved after six years.

In 1916 she met Raoul Heinrich Francé, head of the Biological Institute in Munich, in a microscope course, and became his colleague. In 1920 the first utopian novel “The Souls of Fire” was written, which already raised the problem of the destruction of soil fertility and was positively received by critics.

"I want to make every bet that this will be the German book of 1921!"

- Hermann Bahr

After the divorce from her first husband, she married Francé in Dinkelsbühl in 1923 . In 1924 the couple settled in Salzburg. There, based on impressions and research, she wrote a book about the famous doctor Paracelsus , who died in this city in 1541. The first group of overseas trips fell in the period up to 1930, which gave rise to a series of monographs.

Out of consideration for her husband's health, she stayed in Ragusa (now Dubrovnik ) on the southern Adriatic coast more and more often . From there, the couple fled to Budapest in the turmoil of World War II in 1943 , where Raoul Heinrich Francé died of leukemia that was recognized too late in the same year.

After the end of the Second World War, Annie Francé-Harrar began building a humus station near Budapest in the summer of 1945 for converting urban waste and developed the first inoculation bricks for composting.

In 1947 Annie Harrar returned to Austria. In 1950, the Bavarian Agricultural Publishing House published her work The Last Chance - For a Future Without Need , which was even very popular with Albert Einstein :

"I believe that this book deserves a permanent place in world literature and will keep it ..."

- Professor Albert Einstein

Because of her book “The Last Chance”, the researcher was called to Mexico in 1952 and supported the country for nine years on behalf of the local government by setting up a large humus organization in the fight against erosion and soil deterioration . As a result of their experiences, the work “Humus - Soil Life and Fertility” was finally published in 1957. In this work she summarized her 40 years of research on soil erosion and humus degradation. Your suggestion to counteract the loss of humus soil through sensible waste recycling was taken up by the United Nations General Nutrition Plan.

After several stops in Europe, she returned to her homeland in 1961. She still worked actively in the World Association for the Protection of Life and other organizations. She spent her last years in the Pension Schloss Kahlsberg, where she died in January 1971 after a short illness at the age of 85. She was buried on January 26th at the side of her husband in Oberalm -Hallein.

Since 1959 she had tried in vain to find a publisher to publish an illustrated “Handbook of Soil Life”. But even after her death, none of the relevant specialist publishers showed any interest in the results of their research work. This book could only appear in September 2011. In December 2015, her artistic achievement in this manual was recognized with a vernissage in Linz for the year of the soil . In 2017/18 she was one of 26 personalities who were presented in the Schlossmuseum Linz as part of the exhibition “We are Upper Austria”.

In addition to her academic work, Annie Francé-Harrar also published literary works. She wrote novels - including some that can be assigned to the field of fantasy - stories , poems and plays .

Publications

• The chain , Munich [u. a.] 1912
• Land of Shadows , Munich [u. a.] 1913
• The hell of the lost , Reutlingen 1916
• The Fire Souls , Berlin [u. a.] 1920
• Breed , Leipzig 1920
• The gold animal , Leipzig 1922
• The hand behind the world , Leipzig 1923
• Small life in the forest , Leipzig 1923
• Shadow dance , Stuttgart 1923
• The marriage of tomorrow , Leipzig 1924
• The tragedy of Paracelsus , Heilbronn 1924
• The wrong path of development , Heilbronn 1926
• Journey to Punien , Berlin-Schöneberg 1926
• Animal and Love , Berlin 1926. (Cover design by Hans Windisch ).
• The love world of animals , Heilbronn 1927
• Journey into the primeval world , Berlin 1928
• Südsee , Berlin 1928
• Tropical America , Berlin 1928
• Sharks around May Lou , Berlin 1929
• The island of the gods , Berlin-Schöneberg 1930
• Florida , Berlin-Schöneberg 1932
• The culture of old Europe , Berlin-Schöneberg 1932
• The mysterious Australia , Berlin [u. a.] 1935
• Schweighausen , Berlin-Schöneberg 1935
• The wonder tree , Salzburg [u. a.] 1937
• Longing for the South , Leipzig [a. a.] 1938 (together with Raoul Heinrich Francé )
• The courtyard in the moor , Berlin 1939
• And one day , Hamburg 1940
• The glass rain , Toth Verlag, Hamburg 1948
• Mensch GmbH , Vienna 1949
• The last chance - for a future without need , Munich 1950 (new edition 2007)
• Changes in Life , Vienna 1950
• Humus - Soil Life and Fertility , Bayerischer Landwirtschaftsverlag, Munich [u. a.] 1957
• So it was at nineteen hundred , Munich [a. a.] 1962
• I, the animal, live like this , Graz [u. a.] 1966
• I, the plant, live like this , Graz 1967 aln
• Do not ask where love comes from , Munich [u. a.] 1967

Editing:

• Raoul Heinrich Francé : Life Lessons for Everyone , Berlin 1962

Posthumously

• Manual of soil life , manuscript from 1959, BTQ eV & self-published by Blue Anathan, Kirchberg / Jagst 2012

literature

• Andreas J. Hirsch: Soil is alive! Life and work of Annie Francé-Harrar . Verlag Linz: Upper Austrian State Museum, 2016, ISBN 978-3-85474-324-8 .
• Renate Strohmeyer: Lexicon of the natural scientists and women of Europe . Verlag Harri Deutsch, ISBN 3-8171-1567-9 , p. 108
• Annie Francé-Harrar , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 24/1963 of June 3, 1963, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Web links

• Literature by and about Annie Francé-Harrar in the catalog of the German National Library
• New edition of The Last Chance
• Multilingual website
• Entry on Annie Francé-Harrar by Erna Aescht for the Upper Austrian literary history of the StifterHaus

Individual evidence

1. ↑ NEWLY RELEASED: Annie Francé-Harrar: “That's How It Was Around Nineteen Hundred”. In: Der Spiegel . No. 3 , 1963 ( online ).
2. ↑ Hermann Bahr: Diary. January 25 [1921]. In: Love of the Living. Hildesheim: Borgmeyer 1925, I, 42.
3. ↑ Scanned image section on the website of the Umwelt- & Unternehmensberatung GbR , quotation on the publisher's brochure
4. ^ "Lebensschutz" magazine, issue 1, March 1971
5. ^ Announcement from the publisher from August 2011  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
6. ↑ http://www.die-boden-schphia.de/media/Eingabe_Harrar.pdf
7. ↑ We are Upper Austria! Upper Austria. Landesmuseum, March 26, 2017, accessed on March 23, 2020 (exhibition in the Schlossmuseum Linz from April 2, 2017 to January 7, 2018).