Emil Woermann

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Emil Woermann (born December 12, 1899 in Hoberge-Uerentrup , today Bielefeld , † September 15, 1980 in Göttingen ) was a German agricultural economist and university lecturer in Danzig, Halle and Göttingen.

Life

Emil Woermann, son of a Westphalian farming family, attended the teachers' seminar in Gütersloh after primary school. In 1917/18 he did voluntary military service in an infantry regiment, most recently as a non-commissioned officer. Woermann passed the teaching qualification examination in 1920 and the maturity examination a year later as an external student . After working as a bookseller in Bielefeld for two years, he studied agriculture from 1922 at the Agricultural University in Berlin and at the Friedrichs University in Halle . He became a member of the Corps Agronomia Hallensis . He passed the diploma exam in Halle in 1925 and was awarded a Dr. rer. nat. PhD. He then worked as a research assistant for a year at the Institute for Farm Management at the University of Halle and then until 1931 at the Agricultural Institute at the Technical University of Danzig . There he completed his habilitation in 1929 for the subject of agricultural economics . In 1931 he was given an extraordinary position in this field in Danzig .

In 1933 Woermann accepted the call of the now Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg to the chair of agricultural management . At the suggestion of Rector Hans Hahne , he became Vice Rector in the same year . After Hahne's unexpected death, Woermann was the rector of this university in the academic years 1934/35 and 1935/36 . After joining the Sturmabteilung (SA) in 1933 and from there transferred to the NSKK , Woermann also became a member of the National Socialist German Workers' Party in 1937, after the membership ban of the NSDAP ended . He published several papers on the economy under National Socialism . From 1940 he was the agricultural advisory board member of the Central European Economic Conference. In September 1944 he was arrested because of his connection to the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944 and expelled from the NSDAP on October 21 by Reichsleiter Bormann . Criminal proceedings have been prepared against him before the People's Court . The Attorney General Ernst Lautz completed the indictment on April 14, 1945 in Berlin. Only the end of the war saved Woermann from trial. Woermann remained in custody until the end of April.

Then Woermann returned to Halle and resumed teaching after the university reopened. In 1948 he followed a call from the Georg-August University of Göttingen to the chair for agricultural management . In the academic year 1955/56 he was rector of the University of Göttingen. In this function he was at the forefront of the university's protests against the appointment of the publisher Leonhard Schlueter as minister of education, who was accused of spreading National Socialist ideas. Schlüter, then FDP parliamentary group leader and coalition partner of the Lower Saxony Prime Minister Heinrich Hellwege , who was a member of the German party , was also involved in several criminal proceedings. Shortly after his appointment, Schlueter had to resign in June 1955. Woermann ended his service as a professor for agricultural management when he retired in 1968. Even after that he was still active in research.

Research, teaching and other activities

Before the Second World War, Woermann dealt mainly with questions of the food industry . The focus was on agricultural economics to supply the growing population. Among other things, he worked on state incentives to increase production and profitability .

After 1945 Woermann devoted himself increasingly to the investigation of the organizational forms of agricultural businesses. He systematized the various forms of operation and worked out the causes of different manifestations and developments. This resulted in valuable information for advisory activities . Woermann also initiated corresponding studies for developing countries . There, too, they provided advice and sustainably promoted agriculture.

Another focus of Woermann was economic theory and planning of agricultural operations. He followed up on the work of his teacher Friedrich Aereboe in this regard , drew on the state of knowledge in general business administration and economics and thus created the basis for the application of quantifying planning methods. His groundbreaking publication on this is the contribution "The agricultural enterprise in price and cost equilibrium" in the Handbuch der Landwirtschaft from 1954. The theory and planning of agricultural operations was then further developed by several doctoral theses prepared under Woermann's aegis.

In the 1960s, with the establishment of the European Economic Community , German agriculture faced serious adjustment problems. Woermann has commented on this in numerous reports and in publications, thereby giving both politics and agricultural practice valuable guidance.

Woermann has also published notable contributions to economic and agricultural history. Particularly noteworthy are the works on Albrecht Daniel Thaer and Johann Heinrich von Thünen , the pioneers of scientific agricultural economics. Finally, his overview of the development of farm management from its beginnings to Friedrich Aereboe, published in 1965, belongs to the series of “classic” agricultural history contributions .

Woermann was an enthusiastic and inspiring university professor. The large number of doctoral and post- doctoral candidates as well as the professors who emerged from his institute testify to this . In addition to his work at the university, Woermann made a committed effort to bring his findings into both agricultural practice and agricultural policy . Numerous lectures, as well as his membership in agricultural organizations and institutions (for example in the German Agricultural Society and in the board of trustees at the seminar for agricultural advisory services ), as well as his participation in political committees (scientific advisory board at the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, advisory board for the agricultural report of this ministry, evaluation advisory board at the Federal Ministry of Finance) provide evidence of this. In this context, his membership in bodies of the German Research Foundation and the Science Council is also worth mentioning .

Honors

Publications

  • Proposals to increase the profitability of Gdańsk agriculture. In: Publications of the Agricultural Institute of the Gdansk University of Technology. Issue 1, 1928, pp. 4-45.
  • The processing industry. Forms of operation and questions of profitability of livestock farming . Paul Parey Publishing House, Berlin 1933.
  • National coverage of needs in the food industry. Blut und Boden Verlag, Goslar 1937.
  • Lines of development and changes in the German food industry since the establishment of the Reich. In: Kühn archive. Volume 50, 1938, pp. 55-101.
  • Problems of the food industry in continental Europe and the tasks of German agriculture. J. Neumann, Neudamm 1941.
  • European food economy. German Academy d. Natural scientist, Halle an der Saale 1944.
  • The structural picture of Western European agriculture and economic problems of an agricultural union. In: Expert opinion on questions of a European agricultural community. Published by the Federal Foreign Office. Bonn 1953, pp. 58-107.
  • The farm in price and cost equilibrium. In: Handbook of Agriculture. Volume V, Paul Parey Publishing House, Berlin / Hamburg 1954, pp. 199-216.
  • Agricultural operating systems. In: Concise dictionary of the social sciences. Volume 6, Verlag Fischer et al., Stuttgart / Tübingen / Göttingen 1958, pp. 476-492.
  • Overview of the development of agricultural management from its beginnings to Friedrich Aereboe. In: Friedrich Aereboe . Appreciation and selection from his works on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birthday. Edited by Arthur Hanau, Max Rolfes, Hans Wilbrandt and Emil Woermann. Paul Parey Publishing House, Berlin / Hamburg 1965, pp. 211-239.
  • with Wilhelm Brandes: agricultural management. Publisher Paul Parey, Hamburg / Berlin. Volume 1: Theory and planning of the farm. 1969; Volume 2: Organization and management of farms. 1971. (second unchanged edition. Ibid. 1982).

See also

literature

  • Wilhelm Brandes: Emil Woermann. Agricultural economist . Speech on the occasion of the unveiling of a memorial plaque on December 15, 1989 in Göttingen, Hainholzweg 62. In: Göttinger Jahrbuch. Volume 38, 1990, pp. 245-246.
  • Michael Grüttner : Biographical lexicon on National Socialist science policy. Heidelberg 2004, p. 185.
  • Manfred Köhne: Emil Woermann. In: Contributions to agricultural economics. Festschrift for the 80th birthday of Prof. Dr. Dr. hc Emil Woermann. Edited by M. Koehne. Paul Parey Publishing House, Hamburg / Berlin 1979, pp. 7-12 u. 215–220 (with picture in front of p. 1, bibliography and index of the dissertations supervised by Emil Woermann).
  • Manfred Köhne : Emil Woermann - an exemplary scientist. In: Emil Woermann in memory. (= Series of publications by the Research Association for Agricultural Policy and Agricultural Sociology eV Bonn. Issue 316). 2000, pp. 17-24.
  • Heinz-Georg Marten: Lower Saxony's ministerial fall. Protest and resistance of the Georg-August University of Göttingen against the minister of education Schlueter in 1955. (= Göttinger Universitätsschriften. Series A. Volume 5). Publishing house Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1987.
  • Wilhelm Massante: Emil Woermann. In: Agriculture. Volume 14, 1965, pp. 124-125.
  • Walter Schaefer-Kehnert: Emil Woermann, an outstanding personality. In: Emil Woermann in memory. (= Publications of the Research Society for Agricultural Policy and Agricultural Sociology e.V. Bonn ). 2000, pp. 7-15.
  • Günther Schmitt: In memoriam Emil Woermann. In: Agriculture. Volume 29, 1980, pp. 293-294.
  • Henrik Eberle : The Martin Luther University in the time of National Socialism. Mdv, Halle 2002, ISBN 3-89812-150-X , p. 448f.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dissertation: Investigations into the agricultural operating conditions in Ravensberg .
  2. ↑ a b Rector's speeches (HKM)
  3. ^ A b Henrik Eberle: The Martin Luther University in the time of National Socialism. 2002, p. 448f.
  4. ↑ Michael Grüttner : Biographical Lexicon on National Socialist Science Policy. Synchron, Heidelberg 2004, ISBN 3-935025-68-8 , p. 185.
  5. ^ Heinz-Georg Marten: The fall of the ministers of Lower Saxony. Protest and resistance of the Georg-August University Göttingen against the minister of education Schlueter in 1955. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1987. p. 208.
  6. ↑ STATES / SCHLÜTER A fire should burn. Der Spiegel, June 15, 1955.
  7. ^ Prize winners , accessed on February 8, 2018.
  8. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Volume 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Series 3rd volume 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 263.
personal data
SURNAME Woermann, Emil
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German agricultural economist
DATE OF BIRTH December 12, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Hoberge-Uerentrup near Bielefeld
DATE OF DEATH September 15, 1980
Place of death Goettingen