Franz Sekera

Franz Sekera (born October 21, 1899 in Vienna ; † May 12, 1955 in Spillern (Lower Austria)) was an Austrian soil scientist .

Live and act

Franz Sekera, son of an imperial and royal court official, studied chemistry at the Vienna University of Technology from 1918 to 1924 and then worked as a research assistant at the Institute for Inorganic Chemistry and from 1930 at the Institute for Biochemistry and Microbiology at this university. Due to his chemical and microbiological training, he developed new methods of investigation for pedological research. In 1932 he earned his doctorate in technical sciences at the Vienna University of Technology with his work on methods for assessing the usability of soil water for plants .

In the following years, Sekera worked at the Institute for Agricultural-Chemical Technology at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna. Here he was interested in current questions of fertilization, but also fundamental problems about the development of an optimal soil structure in arable soils . In 1938 he completed his habilitation at this university with the text The structural analysis of the soil as a basis for assessing its water balance - a groundbreaking contribution to the further development of soil physics research concepts.

In 1939, Sekera was entrusted with the management of the newly established Institute for Soil Biology and Plant Nutrition at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna, and in 1942 he was appointed full professor. From then on he mainly devoted himself to the biological problems of soil fertility. He defined soil proofing as the condition of soil with optimal crumb stability. Since most of the microorganisms living in the soil are involved in building stable crumbs , he coined the term " living structures ". His findings gave the "Gare research" a new content. In 1943 he founded the "Reichsbodengesundheitsdienst" with the sustained support of the agricultural adviser Johannes Görbing .

In 1947 Dr. Franz Sekera sentenced by the People's Court to two years imprisonment and financial collapse for particularly reprehensible acts during the time of the National Socialist tyranny (source - Wiener Zeitung of February 19, 1947, page 2).

In 1949 Sekera rebuilt a "soil health service" with the association of agricultural estates in Austria, which he headed until his death. Due to his extraordinary talent for bringing scientific knowledge closer to agricultural practice, his name was known far beyond the borders of Austria. His legacy for the science and practice of agriculture is his multiple published book Gesunder und Kranker Boden . Here, Sekera has presented in detail both the complex interdependencies in the soil and the practical measures to maintain and improve the cooked soil, true to its motto: "Always with nature and never against it!"

Main work

• Healthy and sick soil. A practical guide to keeping the field healthy . Vienna 1943; 3rd edition Berlin 1951; 4. u. 5th edition, revised and expanded by Margareth Sekera, Graz 1959 a. 1984.

literature

• H. Haushofer: Prof. Franz Sekera has passed away . In: overview. Monthly for the German country folk vol. 6, 1955, pp. 334–335 (with picture).
• Paul Esterhazy: Prof. Dr. Ing.Franz Sekera † . In: The agricultural and forestry farm (Vienna) vol. 4, 1955, no. 6, pp. 89–90.
• H. Franz: Prof. Dr. Ing.Sekera †. In communications from the Austrian Soil Science Society, issue 2, 1956, p. 3.
• Wolfgang Böhm : Franz Sekera . In: Biographical handbook on the history of crop production. Munich 1997, pp. 313-315 (with bibliographical references to publications by Sekera in specialist journals).
• Kurt Ehrendorfer:  Sekera, Franz. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-428-11205-0 , pp. 209 f. ( Digitized version ).

Web links

• Literature by and about Franz Sekera in the catalog of the German National Library