Ernst Klapp

Ernst Klapp (born March 18, 1894 in Mainz , † September 27, 1975 in Ottobeuren ) was a German agricultural scientist . He is one of the most prominent university lecturers in the field of arable and crop production and is considered the founder of an independent grassland science .

Stations of his life

Klapp, the son of an officer, began an agricultural apprenticeship in 1913, was drafted into military service in 1914 and only returned to Germany in 1920 from French captivity. He studied agriculture , first at the University of Göttingen , then at the Technical University of Munich , where he received his doctorate in 1923 under Ludwig Kießling with a dissertation on the plant population of Upper Bavarian meadows. This was followed by a two-year activity at the Deutsche Saatbau-Gesellschaft in Berlin. In 1925 he got a job as a consultant in the arable farming department of the German Agricultural Society in Berlin. In this role, he supervised field trials and developed a new system of German potato varieties .

In 1926, Klapp completed his habilitation at the Agricultural University in Berlin with a thesis on the behavior of meadow plants towards fertilization measures and became a private lecturer. In 1927 he followed a call to the University of Jena , where he took over the chair for arable and crop production as the successor to Wilhelm Edler . After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists , Klapp joined the NSDAP . In 1934 he also joined the SS and moved to the Hohenheim Agricultural University as a full professor of arable and crop production .

In 1936, Klapp succeeded Theodor Remy at the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Bonn . As director of the Institute for Soil and Plant Cultivation (since 1958: Institute for Plant Cultivation) he worked here until his retirement in 1964. After the end of the Second World War he was relieved of office because of his involvement in National Socialism and did not return until 1948 Chair back. During his teaching activities, he was also head of the Dikopshof and Rengen experimental farms, which belong to the faculty, and the Marhof experimental farm for fruit and vegetable cultivation . In Bonn he supervised over 600 diploma theses and more than 100 dissertations.

Grassland research

Klapp's main area of ​​interest at all stages of his work was grassland. During his teaching activity at the University of Jena, he researched the meadows and pastures in Thuringia intensively and also dealt with questions of forage production. These first studies, which were mainly oriented towards the needs of agricultural practice, were reflected in numerous publications, including the 1934 publication “ Das Permangrünland. Guide to the successful management of meadows and pastures ”.

Klapp applied the methods of plant sociology to grassland research at an early stage and at the same time examined the ecological basis of the different plant populations. He reported for the first time in the book Agricultural Applications of Plant Sociology published in 1949 about the many years of experience of his research methodology . Under his pioneering leadership, grassland theory developed into an independent scientific discipline in Germany after the Second World War . In the 1950s in particular, subject-specific grassland chairs were set up at most agricultural faculties and institutes with corresponding research facilities were founded.

Klapp's most important publication in the field of grassland theory is his teaching and manual Wiesen und Weiden , the first edition of which was published in 1938 and the fourth edition in 1971. The book, of which there are also foreign-language editions, is one of the "classics" of scientific farming literature. Klapp made extraordinary contributions as the author of several identification books for grasses and grassland herbs , with the help of which these plants can be recognized and identified even when they are not in bloom . His pocket book on grasses , first published in 1937 , whose 13th revised edition was published by Wilhelm Opitz von Boberfeld in 2006, was widely used .

Crop research

In the field of crop production, Klapp was particularly concerned with the potato plant . In addition to his early Berlin studies on the systematics of potato varieties, the text “ Potato growing ” from 1944 should be emphasized from his other work on this cultivated plant . In Bonn he was also interested in current problems in sugar beet cultivation. Klapp was one of the first to recognize the great possibilities of applying the knowledge of modern soil type theory for appropriate plant cultivation experimentation. He has sustainably promoted soil physics-oriented research work on his test areas. In the field trials, he attached great importance to the fact that thorough observations were carried out during crucial trial sections. What could not be seen with any degree of clarity, could not, according to his experience, be brought to reliable results even with the most complicated calculation methods.

Klapp has summarized the entire knowledge of agricultural crop production in a concise brief in his " Textbook on Arable and Plant Cultivation ". For several generations of students, the "Klapp" (1st edition 1940, 6th edition 1967) was the authoritative textbook on plant cultivation in university courses in agricultural science. With this work alone, Klapp has set a permanent monument in German crop science.

At a conference of the German Society of Agricultural Sciences in Göttingen in 1951, Klapp gave a lecture on the goals and tasks of teaching and research in plant cultivation. The manuscript of this lecture was only rediscovered forty years later and published in 1994 as a brochure under the title “ On the Problem of Arable and Plant Cultivation ”. In the article, which is still current today, Klapp deals with fundamental aspects of the understanding of the discipline in crop science. He demands here, among other things, that plant cultivation research must break new scientific ground, even if it could lead to inevitable wrong turns.

Other fields of activity

From 1924 to 1945 Klapp was editor and chief editor of the magazine “Pflanzenbau”. In addition, he was one of the co-editors of the “Zeitschrift für Acker- und Pflanzenbau” from 1949 to 1964. Between 1934 and 1949 he published a total of twelve issues of the series “Writings on modern agriculture” published by the Stuttgart publishing house Eugen Ulmer. After all, he was co-editor of “Pareys Landwirtschaftslexikon”, which was published in 1956/57 as a two-volume work. From 1950 to 1962 Klapp was chairman of the “Working Group on Grassland and Forage Production” and from 1956 to 1960 chairman of the “ Society for Crop Science ”.

honors and awards

The Faculty of Agriculture at Kiel University awarded Klapp the Justus von Liebig Prize in 1956 . The Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Göttingen made him an honorary doctorate in 1958. In 1962 he became a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in Halle / Saale. In 1964, on his 70th birthday, he was made an honorary member of the Society for Crop Science, was awarded the Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany and was honored with a commemorative publication ( contributions to questions of crop production ). Since 2005 the Society for Crop Science has been awarding an Ernst Klapp Future Prize on the occasion of its annual meetings.

Works

• Contributions to the knowledge of some Upper Bavarian meadow plant populations and the factors that determine their composition . Diss. Techn. Hochsch. Munich 1923. Excerpt in: Landwirtschaftliches Jahrbuch für Bayern, Vol. 12, 1922, pp. 398–441.
• Studies on the participation of our meadow plants in the formation of the plant population and their behavior against fertilization . Habil.-Schr. Agricultural Hochsch. Berlin 1926. Zugl. in: Landwirtschaftliche Jahrbücher Vol. 66, 1927, pp. 55–123.
• Studies on German potato varieties . Publishing house Paul Parey Berlin 1928 = messages from the Biological Reichsanstalt for Agriculture and Forestry H. 35.
• The permanent grassland. Guide to the successful management of meadows and pastures . Verlag Eugen Ulmer Stuttgart 1934 = writings on modern agriculture H. 1/2.
• Locations, plant communities and services of the grassland. Edited using the example of Thuringian meadows (with Adolf Stählin), Verlag Eugen Ulmer Stuttgart 1936.
• Paperback of the grasses. Recognition and determination, location and socialization, evaluation and use . Paul Parey Berlin 1937; 13th revised edition by Wilhelm Opitz von Boberfeld. Publisher Eugen Ulmer Stuttgart 2006.
• Meadows and pastures. Creation, maintenance and use of grassland areas . Paul Parey Berlin 1938; 2nd edition 1954; 3rd edition 1956; 4. rework. Ed. With contributions from several specialist colleagues under the title Wiesen und Weiden. A grassland apprenticeship , 1971.
• Textbook of arable and crop production . Publisher Paul Parey Berlin 1941; 2nd edition 1944; 3rd edition 1951; 4th edition 1954; 5th edition 1958; 6th edition 1967.
• Forage production. A guide for practice . Verlag Paul Parey Berlin 1943, 2nd edition 1945; further requirements under the title forage production and grassland use. A guide for practice , 6. neubearb. 1957 edition.
• Potato growing. Nature and practical cultivation of the potato including the cultivation of drift potatoes and seedlings . Verlag Eugen Ulmer Stuttgart 1944 = writings on modern agriculture, issue 10; 2nd edition 1945; 3rd edition 1950.
• Agricultural applications of plant sociology . Publishing house Eugen Ulmer Stuttgart 1949.
• Grassland herbs. Determine in the flowerless state, distribution and value . Publishing house Paul Parey Berlin and Hamburg 1958; further editions under the title herb determination key for the most common grassland and lawn herbs. For addressing in the flowerless state , edited by Wilhelm Opitz von Boberfeld, 2nd edition 1988; 3rd edition 1995; 4th edition Verlag Eugen Ulmer 2004.
• Grass identification key. Determination in the blooming and blossomless state, distribution and value . Paul Parey Publishing House Berlin and Hamburg 1963; 2nd edition edited by Peter Boeker 1978; further editions edited by Wilhelm Opitz von Boberfeld: 3rd edition 1988, 4th edition 1995; 5th edition under the title Grass determination key for the most common grassland and lawn grasses , Verlag Eugen Ulmer Stuttgart 2004.
• Grassland vegetation and location based on examples from West, Central and South Germany . Publisher Paul Parey Berlin and Hamburg 1965.
• On the problems of arable and crop production (lecture from 1951). Publishing house Adelheid Böhm, Göttingen 1994.

literature

• Erwin Aichinger and Walter Czerwinka: Ernst Klapp as researcher, specialist and person on his 60th birthday . Private Festgabe, 20 p .; Printing: Ferd. Kleinmayr, Klagenfurt 1954 (with several pictures and list of publications up to 1954).
• Otto Tornau: Ernst Klapp on his 65th birthday . In: Zeitschrift für Acker- und Pflanzenbau Vol. 108, 1959, pp. 1-4 (with picture).
• Adolf Stählin: Ernst Ludwig Klapp on his 70th birthday . In: Contributions to questions of crop production. Festschrift for the 70th birthday of Prof. Dr. hc E. Klapp. Landwirtschaftsverlag Hiltrup 1964 = Research and Advice Series B, Scientific Reports of the Agricultural Faculty of the University of Bonn, issue 10, pp. 7-12.
• Gerhard Fischbeck : Prof. Dr. Dr. hc E. Klapp 75 years . In: Das Wirtschaftseigene Futter vol. 15, 1969, pp. 85-86 (with picture).
• Eduard Mückenhausen: Professor Dr. Dr. hc Ernst Klapp on his 80th birthday . In: Zeitschrift für Kulturtechnik und Flurbereinigung Vol. 15, 1974, pp. 170–171 (with picture).
• Peter Boeker : In memoriam Prof. Dr. Dr. hc Ernst Klapp . In: Lectures at the 30th conference of the agricultural faculty of the University of Bonn on October 6, 1976 in Bonn. Landwirtschaftsverlag Hiltrup 1976, pp. 17-22.
• Peter Boeker: In memoriam Ernst Klapp . In: Zeitschrift für Acker- und Pflanzenbau Vol. 142, 1976, pp. 165–168 (with picture).

Web links

• Literature by and about Ernst Klapp in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 312.