Josef Becker-Dillingen

Josef Becker-Dillingen , also Joseph , (born September 4, 1891 in Dillingen an der Donau , † December 6, 1983 in Donauwörth ) was a German agricultural and horticultural scientist .

Life path

From 1911 to 1914 he studied agriculture at the Technical University of Munich and worked as a seed breeding manager at various institutions in Austria and Saxony until 1930 . From 1930 to 1945 he was head of the "Horticulture and Special Crops" department at the German Potash Certificate in Berlin and then until 1956 director of the State Horticultural Education and Research Institute in Weihenstephan . He turned down the calls made to him after 1945 to accept a full professorship in Bonn or Berlin.

Author of groundbreaking manuals

Becker-Dillingen gained a high reputation in the professional world as the author of extensive manuals . His most successful book, a six-edition handbook on vegetable growing , was considered the authoritative standard work for decades. With its manuals on grain production , the root crop - and trade crop and legume - and Forage he has a multi-volume standard work of plant cultivation on grown in Central Europe agricultural crops created as it was never before been written in this completeness by an author alone.

With its three handbooks on the nutrition of horticultural crops, agricultural crops and forest plants , Becker-Dillingen has created reference works which, through their wealth of information, provide a comprehensive overview of fertilization practice in the first half of the 20th century. He published a large number of articles in agricultural and horticultural journals, including in the agricultural yearbooks , in the German agricultural press and in the garden world .

The Agricultural and Horticultural Faculty of the Humboldt University in Berlin awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1954 . Parts of Becker-Dillingen's academic legacy are in the archive of the University of Hohenheim .

Major works

• Basics and technology of horticultural plant breeding. A manual on a scientific and practical basis. Berlin 1922 .
• Handbook of the entire vegetable production including the aromatic and medicinal plants . Berlin 1924, 2nd edition 1929, 3rd edition 1938, 4th edition 1943, 5th edition 1950, 6th edition 1956. Different titles in the later editions.
• Handbook of Grain Growing Including Corn, Millet, and Buckwheat . Berlin 1927.
• Handbook of root crops and forage cultivation . Berlin 1928.
• Handbook of legume cultivation and forage cultivation . Berlin 1929.
• Handbook of the nutrition of horticultural crops including medicinal and aromatic plants . Berlin 1933, 2nd edition 1937, 3rd edition 1943.
• Handbook of the Nutrition of Agricultural Crops . Berlin 1934.
• Sources and documents on the history of the German farmer. Primeval times to the end of the Carolingian era . Berlin 1935.
• The nutrition of the forest. Forest Manuring Manual . Berlin 1939.
• Guide to growing vegetable seeds . Wiesbaden 1942, 2nd edition 1943, 3rd edition 1944, 4th edition 1949.
• The feeding of game in the wild. A manual and guide on a scientific and practical basis . Donauwörth 1945.
• Guide to growing seeds in outdoor flowers . Stuttgart 1951 (= basics and progress in horticulture and viticulture, vol. 88).

literature

• Adolf Layer : Dr. hc Becker-Dillingen 85 years old . In: Yearbook of the Historical Association Dillingen an der Donau 1976, pp. 211-213.
• Wolfgang Böhm: Joseph Becker-Dillingen . In: Archiv der Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften H. 16, 1986, pp. 793–795.

Web links

• Literature by and about Josef Becker-Dillingen in the catalog of the German National Library