Helmut Gäde

Helmut Gäde

Heinrich Helmut Gäde , also: Gaede (born April 27, 1932 in Peckensen ) is a German crop scientist , seed business economist and agricultural historian . As a research assistant, he built up the GDR system of plant breeding and seed management from 1963 to 1982 in the management center in Quedlinburg . He then worked until 1997 as the organizer of the ex situ reproduction of plant genetic resources in the Gatersleben cultivated plant bank. He enriched the agricultural historical literature with distinctive articles about the sandy soil pioneer Albert Schultz-Lupitz and the development of the seed industry.

Professional life path

Helmut Gäde, born in Peckensen in the Altmark, comes from a long-established farming family in the region. After four years of visiting the elementary, middle and high school he laid in 1950 at the State High School Home Droyßig in Zeitz , the High School from. In accordance with his career aspiration to become an academically trained farmer, he completed his agricultural apprenticeship on a farm in Hagen / Altensalzwedel with the skilled worker examination in 1951 and studied agriculture at the University of Rostock from 1951 to 1954 . Outstanding university lecturers, including the plant breeder Hans Lembke , the agricultural historian Richard Krzymowski and the farm instructor Asmus Petersen stimulated his future thinking and action.

After the diploma thesis written at Asmus Petersen on the Altmark in an agronomic and economic perspective and the final examinations to become a qualified farmer, a compulsory internship in Klötze / Altmark followed from 1954 to 1956 . In addition to his professional activity as an agricultural lecturer at the district adult education center , Gäde began his first studies of agricultural heritage in this region, for example about the sandy soil pioneer Albert Schultz-Lupitz and the peat soil pioneer Theodor Hermann Rimpau from Kunrau .

Gäde was professionally connected to the seed industry in science and practice for more than five decades. The actual professional career began from 1956 to 1963 as a research assistant and senior assistant (since 1960) at the Institute for Arable and Crop Production, again at the University of Rostock. Under the aegis of Manfred Seiffert, the Professor of Agronomy, Gäde 1960 with the thesis The creation alkaloidarmer forms of Lupinus luteus in their influence on the Lupine cultivation in Germany Dr. agr. PhD.

After completing an apprenticeship in agriculture and seed cultivation and studying and working as an assistant in Rostock, Gäde worked full-time for more than twenty years in the management center for plant breeding and seed management of the GDR in Quedlinburg (1963–1982) and for fifteen years at the German crop gene bank in Gatersleben (1982-1997). In 1989/90 at the Humboldt University of Berlin , he completed his habilitation ( doctorate B ) in the subject of agricultural history with a thesis on the life's work and legacy of Albert Schultz-Lupitz (1831–1899) to obtain the academic degree “doctor scientiae agriculturarum” (Dr. sc. agr.).

In his “retirement life ” in Quedlinburg, Gäde worked primarily in the field of agricultural journalism .

Contributions to research and development in the seed industry

In the seven years of his assistantship at the Rostock Plant Production Institute, Gäde primarily supported the chair holder in teaching. The independently supervised around 50 diploma theses and more than ten co-supervised dissertations mainly dealt with questions relating to seeds and plant material. On the test field of the institute in the Rostock district of Biestow , all of the agricultural crops registered in the GDR range index were responsibly processed in official variety value tests.

In six semesters from 1960 to 1962, Gäde carried out his own teaching assignments for crop cultivation and raw material supplying crops with students of agriculture and education, given by the rector of the university. As part of a special research assignment, he explored the possibilities of growing yellow blupins. Because he was denied a further university career for political reasons, Gäde looked for his future career in the practical seed industry. A wide range of seed cultivation advisory services at the German Saatzucht-Gesellschaft (DSG) enabled a seamless transition into practice.

In 1963, Gäde was appointed as a research assistant to the management center in Quedlinburg by the general director of the economic association for the publicly owned seed breeding and trading companies in the GDR, where he worked on a total of six comprehensive research assignments and more than a hundred company projections in seed breeding and DSG companies until 1982. Initially, it was about crop rotation and seed cultivation profiling on over 110,000 hectares of the specialty businesses belonging to the branch of industry. The integrated 55 breeding stations ensured a more than 90 percent seed change on all cultivated areas in the GDR. This development planning led by Gäde using the methods of operations research achieved a high degree of economic efficiency over a period of thirty years and was internationally recognized.

Although the high level of professional competence was not disputed, Gäde had to change jobs in 1982, again for political reasons (not a SED member, too much "Western relatives"). This took place at the German Academy of Sciences (DAW) in the Central Institute for Genetics and Crop Plant Research in Gatersleben / Saxony-Anhalt. In the world-renowned German Cultivated Plant Bank ( Genebank ) stationed there , he took on the management task of organizing genetically identical reproductive cultivation with more than 10,000 plant families every year. As a result, more than 15,000 seed samples have been given free of charge to researchers, breeders and botanists in over one hundred countries around the world every year.

Gäde's research tasks focused primarily on the site-appropriate management of the 85 hectares of test fields and nurseries as well as the management of the structural and functional model of a " Noah's Ark ", exemplary on a world scale, for the preservation of a " human heritage " (name of the Food and Agriculture Organization / FAO in Rome). The German Crop Plant Bank Gatersleben became the prototype of the World Genebank for crop plants set up by the United Nations in Svalbard since 2008 .

Contributions to the history of agricultural sciences

As a trained arable and plant farmer as well as a business economist, Gäde has explicitly assigned his scientific publications to the guidelines “Preservation and increase of soil fertility ” and “Preservation and care of the agricultural cultural heritage ”. Under the aspect of soil fertility, he set a lasting monument in the history of agricultural sciences for the Altmark sandy soil pioneer Albert Schultz-Lupitz in 50 years of research through numerous publications. Gäde documented the life's work of this agricultural pioneer and his services to agriculture in 1999 in the commemorative publication The fact is alive - and the legacy. - A Schultz-Lupitz memorial on the occasion of the return of the 100th anniversary of death honored in detail.

In addition to the Schultz-Lupitz publications, Gäde described in detail the decades of his professional activity against the background of recent German contemporary history as agricultural-historical documentation. These include the articles on the history of plant breeding and the seed industry in the five new federal states of Germany (1993), the monograph on The Gatersleben Cultivated Plant Bank - History and Development (1998) and Saatzucht in Quedlinburg - a dialogue with history from the beginnings to the present (2003) and as an updated new edition Die Saatgutwirtschaft in Quedlinburg through the ages (2009).

The collection of biographies made in the legacy of Asmus Petersen, which is entitled On the field of the ear, has a special place among Gädes’s agricultural history publications . Agricultural cultural heritage in Germany (2004) has been published. This comprehensive compendium of agricultural studies is not a lexicon, as is common in biographies, but a personified presentation of German agricultural and horticultural science in chronological order. The agricultural heritage in the German-speaking cultural area is thus gradually recorded in space and time.

Publications

• The creation of low-alkaloid forms in Lupinus luteus on lupine cultivation in Germany . Diss. Agr. Rostock 1960. Typescript.
• Investigations into the rooting conditions of yellow blooming lupins on light soils . In: Albrecht-Thaer-Archiv vol. 6, 1962, pp. 359-375.
• Organization of seeds and plants in the GDR . Subsection in: Basics of plant production. Textbook for agricultural engineering schools, edited by Paul Müller. Landwirtschaftsverlag Berlin 1971; All other editions ibid .: 2nd ed. 1976, 3rd ed. 1981, 4th ed. 1985, 5th ed. 1987.
• Lifetime work and legacy of the farmer Albert Schultz-Lupitz (1831–1899) . Diss. B (habilitation thesis) Humboldt University Berlin 1989. - As a bibliophile book edition under the title: Albert Schultz-Lupitz (1831–1899). Lifetime work and legacy of a German sandy soil pioneer and co-founder of the German Agricultural Society (DLG) . Published by Deutsche Saatveredelung Lippstadt 1991.
• Contributions to the history of plant breeding and seed management in the five new federal states . Parey, Berlin and Hamburg 1993; Plus lectures for plant breeding booklet 23.
• Soil fertility and soil genetics. Reminiscences of the sandy soil pioneer Albert Schultz-Lupitz (1831–1899) . In: Albrecht-Thaer-Archiv, Vol. 27, 1996, pp. 101–119.
• The deed lives - and the legacy. - A Schultz Lupitz memorial . Publishing house Dr. Ziethen Oschersleben 1998.
• The Gatersleben Cultivated Plant Bank - History and Development . Verlag Ruth Gerig Quedlinburg 1998.
• On the 100th anniversary of Albert Schultz-Lupitz's death . In: Journal for Agricultural History and Agricultural Sociology Vol. 46, 1999, pp. 1–26.
• Seed breeding in Quedlinburg. A dialogue with history from the beginning to the present . Ara-Verlag Quedlinburg 2003.
• On the field of the Aehre - agricultural cultural heritage in Germany . docupoint Verlag Magdeburg 2004.
• Closing screen - An agricultural historical excursus on agricultural cultural heritage . (To commemorate the 175th birthday of Albert Schultz-Lupitz). docupoint Verlag Magdeburg 2006.
• Lupine Doctor & Schultz Lupitz Researcher. Excerpts from the memoirs of an Altmark farmer . Private printing, Curriculum Vitae Gaedensis, Volume 10, Quedlinburg 2009 (with photos and list of publications).
• Seed farming in Quedlinburg through the ages . docupoint Verlag Magdeburg 2009.
• Paths and detours of the brand names of Quedlinburger seed farms , docupoint GmbH Barleben, 2010

literature

• H. Schierhorn: Heinrich Helmut Gäde, seed business economist . In: Biographical lexicon on the history of plant breeding. Edited by Gerhard Röbbelen, 2nd volume, Verlag Liddy Halm Göttingen 2002, S, 94–95 (with picture and list of publications); zugl. Issue 55 in the series "Lectures for Plant Breeding".
• Autobiographical sketches by H. Gäde in his books Die Kultur Pflanzenbank Gatersleben , 1998, pp. 357–361 and Auf dem Felde der Aehre , 2004, pp. 466–468.

Web links

• Literature by and about Helmut Gäde in the catalog of the German National Library

• Literature about Helmut Gäde in the state bibliography MV