Carl von Wulffen

Carl von Wulffen (born December 1, 1785 on the Wuticke estate near Kyritz ( Brandenburg ), † April 23, 1853 in Pietzpuhl near Magdeburg ) was a German farmer , landowner and agricultural scientist . In 1818 he coined the term “ statics of agriculture ” and developed the doctrine of the balance between the deprivation of nutrients from the soil by the cultivated crops and the supply of nutrients through fertilization to form a comprehensive agronomic building of thought.

Live and act

Carl von Wulffen, son of Carl von Wulffens, owner of the manor and his wife Henriette geb. von Nimschewsky, served as a junker in a regiment in Potsdam from 1800 to 1806 , then completed practical agricultural training and from 1808 attended the Albrecht Daniel Thaers teaching institute in Möglin . In 1810 he undertook an almost one-year trip through southern Germany, Switzerland, France and the Netherlands, where he studied in detail the local cultivation methods in agriculture. In France he got to know the cultivation of the white lupine as a green manure plant . From 1813 to 1815 he took part in the freedom struggles, most recently as battalion commander. After Napoleon's final defeat, he retired from military service and from then on managed the Grabow and Pietzpuhl family estates.

At Gut Pietzpuhl , which he inherited in 1828, Wulffen used cultivation experiments to demonstrate how lupine green manure can improve the soil fertility of sandy soils and thus significantly increase crop yields. His work " About the cultivation of white lupins in northern Germany " (1828) accelerated the introduction of lupine cultivation in the Mark Brandenburg . Wulffen also made great contributions as an innovative farmer with the cultivation of Jerusalem artichokes and fescue .

As an agricultural theorist , Wulffen was best known for his contributions on the statics of agriculture , the theory of the balance between the nutrient deprivation of the soil by the cultivated crops and the nutrient supply by fertilization. Before 1810 Albrecht Daniel Thaer had developed the first concepts of a statics theory . Wulffen dealt intensively with this topic on the campaigns of 1813 and 1814. His work " Attempt at a theory about the relation of the harvests to the property and strength of the soil, about its enrichment and exhaustion " (1815) was discussed extremely favorably by Thaer in the "Möglinschen Annalen der Landwirthschaft" (Vol. 1, 1817) . Thereupon Wulffen published an article in the same journal (Vol. 2, 1818) in which he first used the term “statics of agriculture”.

Wulffen mathematically formulated the complex relationships between a state of equilibrium between nutrient extraction and nutrient supply in agricultural operations in his "Ideas for the Basis of Statics of Agriculture" (Möglinsche Annalen der Landwirthschaft Vol. 11, 1823). He made a distinction between three factors that influence crop yields and described these as wealth , fertility and activity ( strength ) of the soil. By wealth he understood the nutrients not yet directly available to plants, by fertility the nutrients available to plants and by activity the ability of the soil to convert the wealth into fertility. According to this theory, soil fertility is a product of wealth and activity.

Wulffen later calculated the wealth and activity of different arable soils through his own field tests . He published the results of these experiments in the two books, some of which were strongly mathematically conceived, “ Die Vorschule der Statik des Landbaues ” (1830) and “ Draft of a method for calculating field systems ” (1847). From this, Wulffen developed his comprehensive "teaching building for statics" (study of the statics of agriculture). His ideas were not without contradiction, but they influenced the agricultural thinking within the agricultural sciences up to the present.

Main publications

• Attempt of a theory about the relation of crops to the power and strength of the soil, about its enrichment and depletion . Maurers Verlag Berlin 1815.
• Letter to State Councilor Thaer on the statics of agriculture . In: Möglinsche Annalen der Landwirthschaft Vol. 2, 1818, pp. 238–265.
• Ideas for the basis of a statics of agriculture . In: Möglinsche Annalen der Landwirthschaft Vol. 11, 1823, pp. 389-465.
• About the cultivation of the white lupine in northern Germany . Verlag Heinrichshofen Magdeburg 1828.
• The pre-school of statics of agriculture . Publishing house Heinrichshofen Magdeburg 1830.
• Design of a methodology for the calculation of the field systems . Publishing house Veit & Co. Berlin 1847.

literature

• Carl von Wulffen = Pietzpuhl. A picture of culture and character . In: Prussian year books, vol. 11, 1863, pp. 267–269. - Zugl. as a brochure: Verlag G. Reimer Berlin 1863. - Short version in: Journal für Landwirthschaft Jg. 12, 1864, pp. 167-175.
• Monument to Albrecht Thaer in Berlin with text by Th. Fontane . Supplement to the annals of agriculture in the Royal Prussian States. Berlin 1863, pp. 19–22 (with picture).
• Asmus Petersen: Alexander von Lengerkes works. A previously untapped source of agricultural research . In: Research and Progress Vol. 28, 1953, pp. 108-112 (description of the crop rotations on the estate in Pietzpuhl).
• Kord Baeumer: Environmentally Conscious Agriculture: Back to the Ideas of the 19th Century? In: Reports on Agriculture, Vol. 64, 1986, pp. 153-169 (Carl von Wulffen's ideas and their significance for organic farming).
• Hubertus von Wulffen: Carl von Wulffen and his work in Pietzpuhl . In: THAER TODAY. Published by the Fördergesellschaft Albrecht Daniel Thaer e. V. Möglin, Vol. 5, 2008, pp. 1-8 (with picture).
• Frank Ellmer and Wilfried Hübner: On the statics of agriculture from a historical and current perspective . In: THAER TODAY. Published by the Fördergesellschaft Albrecht Daniel Thaer e. V. Möglin, Vol. 5, 2008, pp. 9-22.

Web links

• Literature by and about Carl von Wulffen in the catalog of the German National Library