Kurt Opitz (agricultural scientist)

Kurt Opitz (born November 25, 1877 in Semmelwitz (Silesia), † October 5, 1958 in Berlin ) was a German arable and crop scientist.

Life

Opitz, son of a farmer, studied agriculture in Halle / S since 1901. and Breslau and received his doctorate in 1904 from the University of Breslau with a dissertation on the rooting and tillering of cereals. After completing his doctorate, he stayed in Breslau, initially as an assistant at the Institute for Plant Production Studies, then as an employee at the Agricultural Research Station. In 1921 he followed a call to the chair for arable and crop production at the Agricultural University in Berlin . Here he worked until his retirement in 1950. From 1931 Opitz was an honorary member of the Masovia Hunting Corps in Berlin .

Research services

In the first few years of his official activity in Berlin, Opitz was primarily concerned with setting up modern research facilities in Dahlem, which his predecessor Kurt von Rümker had been denied. According to Opitz's conception, an institute building with over 30 rooms, several laboratories, a greenhouse and a test field was created. On the Bornim domain (1927–1935) and since 1936 on the test estate in Thyrow near Trebbin, he had further areas available for field tests.

Opitz led to the humus-poor, sandy soils in the Berlin area by highly-designed field trials, which is primarily concerned with questions of tillage , the soil fertility of fertilization and the water balance addressed the floors. In addition to this long-term experiment , he devoted a significant part of his plant cultivation experimentation to his favorite plants, flax , rye and potatoes .

During his almost thirty-year tenure in Berlin, Opitz led 54 doctoral students to doctorate. He published over 300 articles in scientific and popular science journals, in handbooks and as independent writings. After the end of the Second World War he played a decisive role in the reconstruction of the destroyed agricultural teaching and research facilities in Berlin.

Fonts (selection)

• Investigations into rooting and tillering of some types of grain . Diss. Phil. Wroclaw 1904.
• Modern rye cultivation . Publishing house Paul Parey Berlin 1925 = Landwirtschaftliche Hefte No. 53/54.
• The potato cultivation . In: Handbook of Agriculture in five volumes. Edited by F. Aereboe, J. Hansen and Th. Roemer. Publishing house Paul Parey Berlin 1930, vol. 3, pp. 109–166.
• Tillage problems . In: Problems of Science in the Past and Present H. 6. Edited by Gerhard Kropp, Berlin 1948, pp. 7–46.
• Ecological-geographical experiments with flax . In: Zeitschrift für Acker- und Pflanzenbau Vol. 91, 1949, pp. 234–264.
• Growing legumes . Deutscher Bauernverlag Berlin 1949 = series of publications Deutscher Bauernverlag vol. 28.

literature

• Otto E. Heuser: Prof. Dr. Kurt Opitz, Berlin, 70 years old . In: Naturwissenschaftliche Rundschau vol. 1, 1948, p. 41.
• Ernst Tamm: Kurt Opitz 75 years . In: Zeitschrift für Acker- und Pflanzenbau Vol. 95, 1952, pp. 361–362 (with picture).
• Alfred Hey: Prof. Dr. Kurt Opitz passed away . In: Die Deutsche Landwirtschaft Vol. 9, 1958, p. 606.
• Karl Rathsack: Kurt Opitz † . In: Zeitschrift für Acker- und Pflanzenbau Vol. 107, 1959, pp. 126–128.

Web links

• Literature by and about Kurt Opitz in the catalog of the German National Library