Gertrud Franck

Gertrud Franck (* 25. September 1905 in Untergröningen ; † 18th April 1996 in Stuttgart ) was a German non-fiction author and organic horticulture . Starting in the 1940s, it developed its own mixed culture system, serial mixed culture with integrated crop rotation , green manure crops and area composting.

Life

Gertrud Franck initially worked as a community helper in the church-social area. Through her marriage to the farmer Hannfried Franck in 1935, she became a farmer on a large agricultural seed farm on the Oberlimpurg near Schwäbisch Hall . On an area of ​​the farm that had previously been used as a pig pasture, she laid out a vegetable and fruit garden about 1 hectare in size. She managed this together with employees of the company and female apprentices in housekeeping.

Create

The large area offered space for mixed culture experiments with repetitions, as was practiced in agricultural experimentation at the time. (From today's perspective, one would their approach as proto scientifically described.) Gertrud Franck's concern was first, with the developed her series mixed culture to give rural women a practical horticulture system at hand, with which it forces gentle healthy vegetables and fruits to Could grow self-sufficiency. At that time it was not yet a question of operating organically in the sense understood today.

Wolfgang von Haller from the Soil and Health Society was the first to recognize the groundbreaking importance of Gertrud Franck for the health and emerging organic farming scene. From 1957 to 1965 he published a series of articles by Gertrud Franck on mixed culture in his newsletter Soil and Health and summarized the articles in a brochure Health through Mixed Culture . This illustrated brochure with a drawn cultivation plan was printed in nine editions with a total print run of 55,000 copies.

The decisive breakthrough came with the publication of the bound book Healthy Garden by Mixed Culture in 1980. This work reached eight editions. The photos of her husband Hannfried Franck, who had documented the experiments in the mixed culture garden from the start, contributed to the success of Gertrud Franck's publications. In 2019, oekom Verlag in Munich brought out a new edition of this work based on the 8th edition from 1991.

Gertrud Franck carried out her practical and journalistic work with great thoroughness and perseverance for decades until around the mid-1980s. At the same time, she gave lectures throughout Germany (West) and abroad and delighted her audience with her well-founded professional knowledge and authenticity.

Works

• Health through mixed culture. Soil and Health, Langenburg, 1st edition 1965.
• Healthy garden through mixed culture. Vegetables, herbs, fruits and flowers. Südwest Verlag, Munich, 1st edition 1980. ISBN 3-517-00720-X .
• Blooming wild garden. Productive kitchen garden. Südwest Verlag, Munich 1985. ISBN 3-517-00859-1 .
• Healthy garden through mixed culture. Vegetables, flowers, herbs, fruits. New edition: oekom Verlag, Munich 2019, ISBN 978-3-96238-101-1 .

literature

• Brunhilde Bross-Burkhardt: Private Organic Horticulture in Southern Germany since 1945 - The Role of Pioneers and Changes in Knowledge Transfer. Edition Gardens and History, Langenburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-00-033835-9 .