Gerhard Voigtländer

Gerhard Voigtländer

Gerhard Voigtländer (born November 25, 1912 in Ströbeck near Halberstadt ; † May 7, 2003 in Freising ) was a German plant cultivation and grassland scientist . From 1963 to 1982 he headed the Institute for Grassland Studies at the Technical University of Munich in Weihenstephan . He is considered to be one of the trailblazers for scientifically based grassland ecology .

Life

Gerhard Voigtländer came from a long-established farming family in the Halberstädter Börde . He attended elementary school in Ströbeck and the cathedral high school in Halberstadt , where he passed his Abitur in 1932 . He then completed a two-year agricultural apprenticeship. From 1934 he studied agriculture at the Technical University of Munich and at the University of Halle (Saale) and in 1937 acquired the title of qualified farmer . At times he had to take over the management of his parents' farm for his sick father. This was followed by a two-year activity at a Stuttgart-based company specializing in natural resources and civil engineering. From 1939 to 1945 he served as a soldier in the Wehrmacht .

As a result of the land reform carried out in the Soviet occupation zone after the end of the Second World War , Voigtländer lost his parents' farm in 1945. He found a new home in Swabia, his wife's home. At first he ran an agricultural business, but in 1948 he accepted an offer from Walther Brouwer , director of the Institute for Plant Cultivation and Plant Breeding at the Hohenheim Agricultural University , to do a doctoral thesis. In 1950 he received his doctorate there with the dissertation " The liquid manure management and the prevention of liquid manure damage in grassland farms ". Immediately after completing his doctorate, he became a research assistant at Ruhrstickstoff-Aktiengesellschaft Bochum in Stuttgart. In this function, he advised farmers on the use of mineral fertilizers in lectures and one-on-one discussions.

After seven years of successful consulting work , Voigtländer returned to science. His doctoral supervisor Walther Brouwer had offered him in 1957 to take on a position as a research assistant at his institute at the Hohenheim Agricultural University and at the same time opened up the opportunity to do his habilitation. Voigtländer accepted this offer a year later.

In Hohenheim, Voigtländer coordinated the experiments on the large test field of the Hohenheim Plant Production Institute with those of the Oberlindenhof research estate on the Swabian Alb. In 1960 he was awarded the title of Scientific Council . In 1963 Voigtländer qualified as a professor with the text " About the dependence of yield formation and yield levels in some agricultural crops on soil and climate at two different altitudes ". He received the Venia legendi for the field of arable and crop production including grassland management.

Immediately after his habilitation, Voigtländer was appointed professor and appointed to the newly established chair for grassland teaching at the Technical University of Munich in Weihenstephan . With technical and scientific staff, he built an institute building with laboratory rooms designed according to his plans and set up a test field. He worked in Weihenstephan until his retirement in 1982.

Research and Teaching

In the fields of grassland theory and forage cultivation , Voigtländer, together with employees and doctoral students, dealt with questions of pasture management , feed evaluation in growing pastures, the quality of fresh forage, the use of forage in the pastures, feed conservation, manure management , and the development of sports turf in Dependence on care and stress. In addition to these problems, which mainly belong to the field of applied research, he also conducted basic research on the uptake of trace elements by plant roots, the formation of carbohydrates in forage plants, soil moisture and soil compaction in grassland scars and the complex mechanisms of action of nitrogen fertilization in grassland use.

Voigtländer has significantly expanded its knowledge of the flora and the yield reserves of the alpine pastures . Based on his results from time-consuming, interdisciplinary long-term experiments, he was not only able to give farmers and grassland farmers specific recommendations for action for landscape protection. His publications on alpine pastures still offer a variety of suggestions on questions of intensification and extensification of grassland areas, as well as discussions about the preservation and promotion of grassland biotopes . With this research he is one of the pioneers of scientifically based grassland ecology .

Voigtländer published the results of his research work in the "Zeitschrift für Acker- und Pflanzenbau", in the "Bavarian Agricultural Yearbook", in the magazine "Landwirtschaftliche Forschung" and in the journal "Das Wirtschaftseigene Futter". His main scientific works include the book " Methods of Grassland Investigation and Assessment " (1979) , written with Norbert Voss . The book " Grünlandwirtschaft und Futterbau " (1987), which he published together with Helmut Jacob with the participation of numerous specialist colleagues, was for many years the authoritative standard work in this field.

As a university lecturer, Voigtländer offered special courses for all disciplines in agricultural sciences , with field exercises and excursions taking up a relatively large amount of space. A specialty for Weihenstephan was the subject of mountain farming, which he represented . He led 26 doctoral students to doctorate. Three of his students completed their habilitation.

honors and awards

Due to his professional competence, Voigtländer was entrusted with the management of scientific organizations in crop production and grassland management. From 1966 to 1970 he was chairman of the grassland and fodder production group in the Society for Crop Science . This scientific society elected him for the term of office from 1967 to 1969 as its deputy, for the term of office from 1970 to 1972 as its first chairman and made him an honorary member in 1989 . In 1984 he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon. 1990 awarded him the Faculty of Agriculture at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms University in Bonn , the honorary doctorate .

Main publications

• Manure management and the prevention of manure damage in grassland farms . Diss. Agricultural University of Hohenheim 1950. Typescript.
• Manure management, development, distribution, technology . Frankfurt am Main 1951 = series of publications by the agricultural and domestic evaluation and information service H. 9.
• Experiments with varied distribution of nitrogen doses on pastures in the Swabian Alb . In: Zeitschrift für Acker- und Pflanzenbau Vol. 113, 1961, pp. 263-279.
• About the dependence of the yield formation and yield level of some agricultural crops on the soil and climate at two different altitudes . Habil.-Schr. Agricultural University of Hohenheim 1963. - Zugl. in the book trade near Ulmer, Stuttgart as: Work of the Agricultural University Hohenheim Vol. 27, 1964.
• Course of growth and pasture yield . In: Das Wirtschaftseigene Futter, Vol. 10, 1964, pp. 3-11.
• The question of "grassland or arable forage cultivation" from a plant cultivation perspective . In: Bayerisches Landwirtschaftliches Jahrbuch vol. 43, 1966, pp. 43–57.
• Feed advertising and preservation . In: Ernst Klapp: meadows and pastures. A grassland lesson. Paul Parey, Berlin and Hamburg 1971, pp. 498-571.
• Limits to intensification in forage production . In: Swiss Agricultural Monthly Issues Vol. 52, 1974, pp. 298-312.
• The limits of extensive grassland use . In: Bayerisches Landwirtschaftliches Jahrbuch vol. 52, 1975, pp. 573-577.
• Gerhard Voigtländer and Norbert Voss: Methods of grassland investigation and assessment. Grassland, field forage, lawn . Ulmer, Stuttgart 1979.
• Possibilities and limits for maintaining and promoting the diversity of species and biotopes . In: Agricultural Research, Special Issue 37 = Congress Volume 1980, pp. 12-19.
• Problems and developments on permanent grassland and in forage cultivation . In: 10th Hülsenberg Talks = series of publications by the Schaumann Foundation for the Promotion of Agricultural Sciences, 1984, pp. 68–74.
• Grassland and forage production . Edited by Gerhard Voigtländer and Helmut Jacob. With the collaboration of Peter Boeker and others specialist colleagues. Ulmer, Stuttgart 1987.

literature

• Adolf Stählin: On the 65th birthday of Gerhard Voigtländer . In: Das Wirtschaftseigene Futter, Vol. 23, 1977, pp. 141-143 (with picture).
• Gertrud Helm: Prof. Voigtländer 75 years . In: TUM-Mitteilungen (communications from the Technical University of Munich) 7/87, 1987, p. 6 (with picture).
• Hans Schnyder: Gerhard Voigtländer 90 years . In: TUM-Mitteilungen (communications from the Technical University of Munich) 2-02 / 03, 2003, p. 52 (with picture).
• Harry Knittel: Gerhard Voigtländer . In: Society for Crop Science. Festschrift for the 25th anniversary. Published by Harry Knittel on behalf of the Board of Directors. Englram & Partner, Haßloch 2007, pp. 40–41 (with picture).

Web links

• Literature by and about Gerhard Voigtländer in the catalog of the German National Library