Fritz Giesecke

Fritz Giesecke (born January 25, 1896 in Hanover , † October 7, 1958 in Braunschweig ) was a German agricultural chemist and soil scientist .

Life path

Fritz Giesecke studied chemistry and agricultural chemistry at the Technical University of Hanover and at the University of Berlin and received his doctorate in 1923 at the University of Göttingen with a dissertation on the effect of nitrogen in urea compounds on the yield of agricultural crops. After completing his doctorate, he stayed in Göttingen. As a scientific assistant he worked for the soil scientist Edwin Blanck and in 1927 acquired the Venia legendi for the field of agricultural chemistry.

As a member of an expert commission, Giesecke traveled to Turkey in April 1928 . There he took over the management of the newly founded Institute for Agricultural Chemistry and Soil Bacteriology at the Agricultural University in Ankara . In June 1929 he returned to the University of Göttingen and taught here as a private lecturer at the Agricultural Chemistry and Soil Science Institute.

After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists , he became a member of the NSDAP in 1933 . He was then ao in 1934. Professor in Göttingen, but in the same year accepted a call to the Agricultural University in Berlin and took over the chair for plant nutrition and soil biology , which he held until 1943. He was then on leave to take up a post as President of the German Scientific Institute in Stockholm . During the National Socialist era , Giesecke held various party offices. He served on the staff of the SA -Hochschulamts Göttingen, was then training manager at SS - Race and Settlement Main Office and Chairman of the Working Group on Agricultural Chemistry.

From 1948 Giesecke worked temporarily at the Agricultural Investigation and Research Institute in Kiel. In 1951 he was appointed director of the agricultural investigation and research institute Ebstorf near Uelzen, which moved back to its old location in Braunschweig in 1954. For health reasons, Giesecke had to resign in April 1958.

Life's work

In Berlin, Giesecke mainly dealt with issues of nitrogen fertilization. He published most of his experimental work in the journal “Bodenkunde und Pflanzenernahrung”, which he was editorially responsible for from 1936 to 1945 as editor or co-editor.

From 1936 to 1945 Giesecke was chairman of the "Association of German Agricultural Research Institutes" and chairman of the Reich working group "Agricultural Chemistry". From 1941 to 1945 he was chairman of the German Soil Science Society and until the end of the Second World War he held leading positions in the International Soil Science Society. From 1943 to 1945 he was President of the German Scientific Institute in Stockholm.

Giesecke is the author of several extensive articles in the "Handbuch der Bodenlehre" published by Edwin Blanck between 1929 and 1931. His treatise on the historical development of soil science, published in Volume 1 (1929), is noteworthy. In the following two decades, Giesecke published further fundamental works on the history of soil science and agricultural chemistry and on outstanding specialist representatives. During the Second World War he collected documents about Carl Sprengel's life's work . A Sprengel biography planned by him remained unfinished. The first part of the manuscript, which was completed in 1945, is in the archive of the University of Hohenheim. In the 1952 commemorative publication of the Agricultural Investigation and Research Institute Ebstorf, Giesecke convincingly presented the forgotten achievements and priorities of Carl Sprengel.

Giesecke earned significant merits with his monograph on the methodology of vessel experiments in agricultural research. This book was published in 1954 as Volume 9 of the multi-volume “Handbook of Agricultural Experiments and Investigations” and was considered the authoritative standard work for several decades .

Publications (selection)

• Mono- and dimethylolurea in their nitrogen effect on plant production and the turnover of their nitrogen in the soil . Diss. Math.-nat Fac. Univ. Goettingen 1923.
• Historical overview of the development of soil science up to the turn of the 20th century . In: Handbook of Soil Science. Edited by Edwin Blanck. Verlag Julius Springer Berlin Vol. 1, 1929, pp. 28-86.
• Work successes and tasks of the Reich working group "Agricultural Chemistry" . In: Der Forschungsdienst, special issue 16, 1942, pp. 71–74.
• Basics of chemistry . Publishing house Trowitzsch & Sohn, Frankfurt / Oder 1943. Wehrmacht edition = Soldiers' letters on professional development, vol. 67; 2nd edition. Published by: World´s Alliance of the Young Men´s Christian Associations War Prisoners´ Aid, London (1945); 3rd edition. Verlag Trowitzsch Holzminden 1949.
• Soil fertility as the foundation of quality production . Festschrift for the 90th anniversary of the agricultural investigation and research institute Ebstorf (formerly Braunschweig). Edited by Fritz Giesecke. Uelzen / Hann. 1952. The text contained several contributions by F. Giesecke on the life and work of Carl Sprengel.
• The vegetation trial. 2. The vessel experiment and its technique (sand and soil culture) . Handbook of agricultural testing and investigation methodology, Verlag Neumann Radebeul and Berlin, Vol. 9, 1954.
• History about the vessel experiment as an exact method of agricultural research . In: Journal of Agricultural History and Agricultural Sociology, Vol. 5, 1957, pp. 193–197.

literature

• JC Poggendorff, Biographisch-Literarisches Handwörterbuch der exacten Naturwissenschaften Vol. VIIa, Part 2, 1958, pp. 201-202 (short biography with list of publications).
• K. Maiwald: Professor Dr. Fritz Giesecke (1896-1958) . In: Journal for Agricultural History and Agricultural Sociology Vol. 7, 1959, pp. 127–128.

Web links

• Literature by and about Fritz Giesecke in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} 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. 183.