Hermann Settegast

Bust for Settegast in the Humboldt University Berlin

Hermann Gustav Settegast (born April 30, 1819 in Königsberg ; † August 11, 1908 in Berlin ) was a German agricultural scientist.

Life

Settegast, son of a court calculator , completed a nine-year agricultural training on the estates of the East Prussian landowner Friedrich von Fahrenheid, went to Berlin in 1844 and studied natural sciences at the Friedrich Wilhelm University . In 1845 he moved to the University of Hohenheim and studied agriculture. From 1847 to 1856 he was administrator of the royal domain Proskau in Silesia and at the same time teacher at the agricultural academy there .

In 1857 Settegast was appointed director of the newly founded Agricultural Academy in Waldau near Königsberg. Here he mainly worked in the field of animal breeding . In 1863 he followed a call to the Agricultural Academy in Proskau . During his directorate, the number of students rose from 36 in the summer semester of 1863 to 62 in the winter semester of 1863/64. In the SS 1864 it increased further to 72, in the WS 1864/65 to 95 and in the SS 1865 to 102. As director he headed this educational institution until it was closed in 1881. Two of his most important publications during this period were two publications on the Academic training of farmers: The agricultural academy Proskau (1864) and the agricultural teaching (1873). In both publications, Settegast contradicts the view, mainly represented by Justus von Liebig , that studying agriculture can only be successfully carried out at universities, but not at agricultural academies. In 1868 Settegast published his epoch-making book Die Thierzucht , of which five editions had appeared up to 1888. With this standard work alone, he is one of the most important animal breeding scientists of the 19th century. In 1873 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina .

In 1881, Settegast accepted a call to the newly founded Agricultural University in Berlin . As a full professor of animal breeding and agricultural management , he worked here until 1889. During this time he took part in the sometimes heated discussions about the value of the cultivation system of the farmer Albert Schultz-Lupitz . In several pamphlets he expressed the fear that with the cultivation system with legumes propagated by Schultz-Lupitz, manure would no longer be necessary as nitrogen fertilizer and that animal breeding could then be viewed as “a necessary evil”.

In the last two decades of his life, Settegast also dealt with historical, cultural, political and ethical issues. Noteworthy is his book Der Idealismus und die deutsche Landwirthschaft (1886). His memoirs appeared under the title Erlebtes und Erstrebtes (1892). Settegast was an active Freemason . He founded a grand lodge himself and published numerous writings on the tasks and goals of Freemasonry.

Settegast was a versatile scientist closely connected with agricultural practice. In 1869 he was appointed a secret councilor. In the same year the University of Wroclaw awarded him an honorary doctorate. In 1881 he was awarded the Golden Liebig Medal.

In the colonnade of the horticultural and agricultural faculty of the Humboldt University in Berlin on Invalidenstrasse, Settegast is remembered with a marble bust .

Great Masonic Lodge of Prussia; Emperor Friedrich on loyalty to the federal government

Settegast was admitted to the Freemasons' League in 1854 in the Psyche Lodge in Opole . In 1859 he joined the Johannisloge Zum Todtenkopf and Phoenix in Königsberg . There he also worked on the three degrees of the Great State Lodge of the Freemasons of Germany .

In 1884 Settegast was elected the office of assigned (deputy) Grand Master of the Grand Lodge Royal York for friendship without prior experience with offices in the Lodge . This happened on the recommendation of the then grand master, Ludwig Herrig . When Herrig died in 1889, Settegast took over the office of Grand Master of the Royal York Grand Lodge.

Settegast wanted to reform the outdated statutes of the Grand Lodge and then set up a commission of fourteen brothers to deal with the revision of the statutes. On November 15, 1889, Settegast resigned from his position as Grand Master because the commission rejected two of his motions with six against four votes. These requests related to:

1. Amendment of the Basic Law concerning the two departments of the Great Lodge.
2. Application for admission of seekers without a Christian denomination.

After the revision of the Basic Law of the Grand Lodge had not brought any changes to Settegast, he left the association of his Grand Lodge entirely and in 1891 joined the Hamburg Lodge Ferdinande Karoline .

On April 15, 1892, brothers in Hamburg, belonging to them - but living in Berlin - submitted a request that allowed them to found a subsidiary of the Hamburg Lodge in Berlin. This request was rejected on the grounds that it violated the Three Grand Lodges Edict drawn up in 1798 , which only tolerates the existence of three grand lodges in Prussia .

Settegast first tried a permit from the government to get, but was in 1892 by Interior Minister Ernst Ludwig Herrfurth rejected shortly after he stepped in response to the rejection of the Hamburg Loge and founded the same year with his followers, of which a large part of the Jewish faith was , an irregular grand lodge named: Great Masonic Lodge of Prussia; Emperor Friedrich on loyalty to the federal government .

Due to the edict, the new grand lodge was banned by the police. Settegast now decided to enforce his rights in court. The way through the courts ended victorious for Seetegast on April 22nd, 1893 before the Prussian Higher Administrative Court , which suspended the old edict of 1798.

The new grand lodge in Settegast was very busy. Within a few years, the new grand lodge had twelve daughter lodges and its own grand lodge magazine ( building blocks ). Lodges also existed in Wroclaw and New York . However, Settegast received no recognition for his grand lodge either from the old Prussian grand lodges or from the humanitarian grand lodges of the German Grand Lodge Association. The Settegast Grand Lodge received recognition from abroad from the Symbolic Grand Lodge of Hungary and the Great East of the Netherlands .

As a result of the isolation, his son-in-law and successor in office, Heinrich Möller , decided to join the Great Lodge of Hamburg . The Settegast grand lodge dissolved, as did its daughter lodges, whereupon the members were newly accepted into the Hamburg system in order to build the Provincial Grand Lodge of Hamburg in Berlin (Provincial Grand Master Möller) on October 28, 1900. At the ceremony, Settegast was proclaimed an honorary member of the Hamburg Grand Lodge.

Settegast died, almost 90 years old, on August 11, 1908 in Berlin.

Fonts (selection)

• An agricultural journey through England. Parallels between English agriculture and that of Germany . Wroclaw 1852.
• The Proskau Agricultural Academy. Described with the help of the academy's teachers . Berlin 1864.
• Animal breeding . Breslau 1868; 2nd Edition. 1869; 3. Edition. 1872; 4. rework. Edition in two volumes: 1. Die Züchtungslehre u. 2. The Feeding Doctrine, 1878; 5. rework. Edition. 1888.
• Tasks and achievements of modern animal breeding . Berlin 1870 = Collection of generally understandable scientific lectures No. 106 = Series 5.
• Agriculture lessons . Wroclaw 1873.
• Agriculture and its business . Breslau 1874; 2nd Edition. 1874; 3. Edition. 1885.
• Schultz-Lupitz and no end. A word for understanding about the application of Liebig's teaching in modern substitute economics . Berlin 1883.
• German agriculture from the cultural-historical point of view . Berlin 1884.
• Idealism and German agriculture . Wroclaw 1886.
• German cattle breeding, its becoming and growth and current position . Berlin 1890.
• German Freemasonry, its essence, goals and future with regard to the Masonic emergency in Prussia . Berlin 1892; 2nd-7th Ed. 1892-1894; 8th edition. under the title: German Freemasonry, its foundations, its goals for Freemasons and non-Freemasons, presented with an appendix: Darwinism in its relationship to natural research, religion and Freemasonry . Berlin 1908.
• Experienced and strived for . Berlin 1892.

literature

• Traugott Keßler:  Settegast, Hermann Gustav. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-428-11205-0 , p. 277 ( digitized version ).
• Alfred Oehlke : Hermann Settegast. His life, will and work. A biographical study . Published by Alfred Unger, Berlin 1904.
• Alfred Oehlke: Hermann Settegast. In: Schlesische Lebensbilder. Volume 2, 1926, pp. 242-246.
• Otto A. Sommer: Hermann Gustav Settegast (1819–1908). In: Günther Franz and Heinz Haushofer (eds.): Large farmers. DLG-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1970, pp. 192-205.
• Eugen Lennhoff, Oskar Posner: International Freemason Lexicon . Almathea-Verlag, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-85002-038-X . (Reprint of the 1932 edition)
• Jürgen Holthoff: The Masons' lodges, influence-power-secrecy. Nikol-Verlag, 1982. (Licensed edition 2006, ISBN 3-930656-58-2 )

Individual evidence

1. ^ Cf. GStA PK I. HA Rep. 31926, fol. 68 BC
2. ↑ Lennhoff / Posner p. 1454/1455.