Hans Holldack

Grave site in Wernigerode

Hans Holldack (born August 22, 1879 in Königsberg / Pr ., † August 11, 1950 in Leipzig ) was a German agricultural engineer . He is one of the pioneers of technical soil cultivation and agricultural machinery teaching in the first half of the 20th century.

Life

Holldack came from a wealthy Königsberg family. His brother was the legal scholar Felix Holldack . After several years of apprenticeship in farms and in a locomotive factory, Holldack studied agriculture and received his doctorate in 1904 at the University of Königsberg with the dissertation " Investigations into the individuality and forage gratitude of the dairy cow ". At first he stayed as an assistant at the Agricultural Institute in Königsberg. In 1908 he went to the Hohenheim Agricultural University as a lecturer in agricultural machinery , where he also took over the management of the examination institute for agricultural machinery. In 1914 he followed a call to the Agricultural University of Bonn-Poppelsdorf . Here, inspired by the development of internal combustion engines, he was particularly concerned with questions of motorized tillage. In 1918 he gave up his ordinariate. In 1919, as head of department at Siemens-Schuckert-Werke in Berlin, he founded an experimental and teaching institute for soil milling culture . At the Gieshof near Wriezen , which was made available to him , he carried out extensive tests on soil tilling, tested its effectiveness through physical soil tests and, through numerous publications, influenced the heated discussions about the goals and tasks of soil cultivation.

In 1928, Holldack took over the chair for agricultural machinery at the University of Leipzig as a full professor . Here he improved the methods of soil milling he had developed. He attached a soil technology laboratory to the institute, where he continued the physical soil investigations that had been started at Gieshof. In 1935 he had to resign from office for political reasons. Until 1938 he taught at two universities in Iran. In 1945 he was able to take over his old chair at the University of Leipzig again. The book “ Maschinenlehre für Landwirte ” (1934), the second edition of which he completed shortly before his death (1949), is considered to be his main work .

His grave is in the central cemetery in Wernigerode .

Fonts (selection)

• Treatment of agricultural machinery . Berlin 1913 = pamphlets of the German Agricultural Society, issue 16; 5th edition, ibid. 1927.
• Comparative studies on the drive of threshing machines by steam locomotives, combustion engines and electric motors 1913/14 . Verlag Paul Parey Berlin 1916 = Work of the German Agricultural Society H. 285.
• Assessment of the success of cultivation on arable soils through physical soil investigations (with W. Nitzsch). In: Progress of Agriculture Vol. 4, 1929, pp. 356–359.
• Mechanical engineering for farmers. Text and auxiliary book for teaching and practice . Publishing house Paul Parey Berlin 1934; 2nd edition, ibid. 1949.

literature

• Arland: half a century dedicated to agriculture. For the 70th birthday of Prof. Dr. Hans Holldacks on August 22, 1949 . In: Deutsche Bauerntechnik Jg. 3, 1949, H. 8, S. 11-12 (with picture).
• Hansen: Hans Holldack † . In: Die Technik Vol. 5, 1950, pp. 494-495.
• Gascard: On the death of Prof. Dr. Hans Holldack . In: Die Deutsche Landwirtschaft Vol. 1, 1950, p. 4 (with picture).

Web links

• Hans Holldack in the professorial catalog of the University of Leipzig