August Wilhelm von Babo

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August Wilhelm Freiherr von Babo around 1884

August Wilhelm Reich Baron von Babo (* January 28, 1827 in Weinheim , † 16th October 1894 in Weidling at Klosterneuburg ), a German-Austrian was viticulture researcher and director of the Austrian School of Viticulture in Klosterneuburg. He himself was of Baden origin.

Live and act

August Wilhelm von Babo was the son of Baron Lambert Joseph von Babo and his second wife Emilie Geib. The chemist Lambert Heinrich von Babo was his half-brother, the agricultural chemist and oenologist Edmund Mach his son-in-law.

Von Babo studied agriculture at the universities of Heidelberg and Freiburg. Later he attended further agricultural institutions for further training and worked at the agricultural college in Weinheim. He then took over the management of the experimental vineyard at the Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences, where he worked for six years. In 1860 he was appointed director of the fruit and viticulture school in Klosterneuburg, which was founded in the same year and which is now the federal college and federal office for viticulture and fruit growing . He held this office until 1893, the end of his professional activity. Under his aegis, the viticulture school grew into a first-class technical school for the Austro-Hungarian monarchy.

On March 27, 1852, von Babo married Auguste Margarethe Bender. His wife died around 1870 and on September 7, 1875 he married Elise Hartig. With both wives he had a daughter and four sons.

In 1893 he was retired at his own request and died at the age of 67 on October 16, 1894 in Weidling near Klosterneuburg.

He himself donated the Babo Medal for services in viticulture.

meaning

Von Babo's importance is based on his extensive promotion of viticulture and the expansion of training and research in the Klosterneuburg Viticulture School.

In 1861 Babo further developed the saccharometer invented by Karl Josef Napoleon Balling into the Klosterneuburg must weigher , which is still used today to measure the sugar content in must.

Since the outbreak of the phylloxera disaster he fought against this danger for viticulture. It is thanks to his proposal that viticulture was converted to a rootstock made from phylloxera-resistant North American vines. The irony of fate is that phylloxera was introduced to Austria-Hungary on the American vines via Great Britain, which Babo introduced to Austria in 1868 for experimental purposes - in the search for solutions to the fight against powdery mildew . (From 1863 phylloxera was detected in France.) As a result, the hostility against him was so great at times that he could only walk from his apartment to the viticulture school with a gendarmerie escort.

Major works

From 1854 to 1857 von Babo edited the agricultural correspondence sheet for the Grand Duchy of Baden and was the editor of several specialist journals. In addition, he has written and published several standard works on viticulture and oenology:

  • Handbook of Viticulture and Cellar Management (1881–1882), together with Edmund Mach . (Standard work with 5 editions)
  • Culture and description of American grapes (1885)
  • Agricultural boards for fruit and wine growing, cellar management and fertilizer theory (1863)
  • Agricultural boards II: Tobacco growing, viticulture. Vienna: Anton Hartinger & Son 1869.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Agricultural tables II: Tobacco growing, viticulture. Vienna: Anton Hartinger & Son 1869.
  2. ^ Society for the History of Wine : By Babo in the database of the Society for the History of Wine
personal data
SURNAME Babo, August Wilhelm von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Babo, August Wilhelm Reichsfreiherr von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Austrian wine researcher
DATE OF BIRTH January 28, 1827
PLACE OF BIRTH Weinheim
DATE OF DEATH October 16, 1894
Place of death Weidling (municipality of Klosterneuburg)