Georg Liebscher

Georg Liebscher (born February 8, 1853 in Magdeburg , † May 8, 1896 in Göttingen ) was a German crop scientist .

Study time

Georg Liebscher, son of the Magdeburg pastor Johann Liebscher , first worked as an administrator in agricultural businesses after completing a high school in Magdeburg and an agricultural apprenticeship. From 1874 to 1875 he studied at the Agricultural University in Berlin . In 1875 he continued his agricultural studies at the University of Halle , where he received his doctorate from Julius Kühn in 1879 with a thesis on the causes of beet fatigue .

In 1880 he went to Japan for a year as head of the agronomic-geological survey . A book publication about the findings and experiences of this research stay was highly appreciated by his specialist colleagues. With this thesis he completed his habilitation in 1883 at the University of Jena .

Lecturer at the University of Jena

In 1882 Liebscher had already taken over the administration of the Agricultural Institute at the University of Jena. Here he worked - initially as a private lecturer, later as an associate professor - until 1889.

The focus of his research was on fertilization issues . Based on the results of container and field tests, he expanded the fertilization theory of that time. He called for the individual nutrient requirements and the development of the root systems of the individual plant species to be taken into account when measuring the fertilizer application.

Professor at the University of Göttingen

In 1889 Liebscher went to the Agricultural University of Bonn-Poppelsdorf for almost a year . In 1890 he succeeded Gustav Drechsler o. Professor and Director of the Agricultural Institute of the University of Göttingen .

In Göttingen, Liebscher continued the experiments that had been started in Jena on the fertilizer requirements of cultivated plants. In 1895 he found a generally applicable law of plant physiology, according to which plants use the minimum production factor to produce more substances, the more the other production factors are in optimal proportions. As a supplement to the law of the minimum formulated by Carl Philipp Sprengel and Justus von Liebig , Liebscher's law of the optimum represented an important advance in knowledge in the field of the developmental physiology of cultivated plants.

From 1888 until his death, Liebscher was in charge of the scientific evaluation of the grain cultivation trials organized by the German Agricultural Society . With these tests, the cultivation value of the most important German grain varieties at different locations was checked for the first time according to a uniform test plan. The variety reports published by Liebscher in the "Yearbooks of the German Agricultural Society" impressively show his ability to make the results obtained useful for both science and practice.

Liebscher, who also edited the Journal für Landwirtschaft during his tenure in Göttingen , died at the age of 43 after a long illness. He was one of the most imaginative representatives in the field of fertilizer theory. With his demand for greater consideration of the different nutrient requirements of cultivated plants in fertilization practice, he is one of the pioneers of a crop science based on physiological principles .

Fonts

• About the relationship of Heterodera schachtii to beet fatigue . Diss. Phil. Halle-Wittenberg 1879.
• Japan's agricultural and general farming conditions. Depicted according to own observations . Publishing house by Gustav Fischer Jena 1882 ( digital copy in the Berlin State Library )
• The course of nutrient uptake and its significance for fertilizer theory . Published by Paul Parey, Berlin 1888. Separate print from: Journal für Landwirthschaft Vol. 35, 1887, pp. 335-518.
• The agricultural studies at the University of Göttingen . Published by Paul Parey, Berlin 1893.
• Investigations into the determination of the fertilizer needs of arable soils and cultivated plants . In: Journal für Landwirtschaft, Vol. 43, 1895, pp. 49-216 (with the most important results of his fertilization research).
• Trials of cultivation with different summer and winter wheat varieties . Started from because. Prof. Dr. Liebscher-Göttingen, continued and edited by Prof. Dr. Edler-Jena. In: Work of the German Agricultural Society H. 32, 1898. 130 pp.

literature

• B. Tollens: Obituary for the deceased main editor of the Journal for Agriculture Prof. Dr. Georg Liebscher . In: Journal für Landwirtschaft Vol. 44, 1896, pp. 201–210 (with picture in front of p. 105).
• Wolfgang Böhm: Göttingen crop scientist. A bibliography . Regensburg 1988 (with a complete list of all writings by and about Georg Liebscher, pp. 21–31).
• Hermann Grünzel: Liebscher, Georg. In: Guido Heinrich, Gunter Schandera (ed.): Magdeburg Biographical Lexicon 19th and 20th centuries. Biographical lexicon for the state capital Magdeburg and the districts of Bördekreis, Jerichower Land, Ohrekreis and Schönebeck. Scriptum, Magdeburg 2002, ISBN 3-933046-49-1 , pp. 419-420.

Web links

• Literature by and about Georg Liebscher in the catalog of the German National Library