Agricultural Academy Möglin

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The Agricultural Academy Möglin (Province of Brandenburg) was a teaching institute for educated farmers founded in 1806 by Albrecht Daniel Thaer and existing until 1861, which since 1819 was officially allowed to use the name academic teaching institute for agriculture .

founding

Albrecht Daniel Thaer (1752–1828), who founded an agricultural teaching institute in Celle in 1802 , accepted an offer from the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III in 1804 . to set up a similar training facility in Prussia with state help. Thaer acquired the west of the city on the Wriezen on the heights on the edge of the Oderbruch located manor Möglin , which included an agricultural area of approximately 300 hectares. Within two years he built a teaching building and a residential building for the students. The first course began on November 1, 1806.

Teaching concept

The basic idea of ​​Thaer's teaching concept was to only accept a limited number of students, around 20 at a time, for one year. A good general education and proof of agricultural practice were required for admission. Tuition fees had to be paid for boarding-school accommodation, meals and lessons. There was a relatively strictly organized teaching system. Regular participation in the courses was compulsory. Thaer, however, by no means viewed his training facility as a frontal learning school. The focus of the lessons was on discussions in small groups, practical exercises in the laboratory and on test fields as well as excursions to farms in the regional area.

Thaer's most important pedagogical principle for his training concept was the unity of theory and practice. He attached great importance to the natural sciences: The basic subjects included chemistry , physics , botany , zoology , geography and mathematics . The focus of the agricultural subjects was the "business studies" ( agricultural economics ), followed by the "agronomy" ( soil science , fertilizer studies , arable and plant cultivation ) and the subjects from animal production studies . The lecturers at his teaching institute included his “house chemist” Heinrich Einhof and his two sons-in-law Georg Ernst Wilhelm Crome and Franz Körte .

Development history

Due to the wars of freedom , Thaer had to close his institute in 1813. The reopening in 1815 was followed by a decade of successful expansion. Due to the economic success of his farm, he was able to invest considerable amounts in his teaching institute. In 1817 he founded the “ Möglinschen Annalen der Landwirtschaft ” as a “house journal” , of which a total of 30 volumes had appeared by 1833 and which are now classified as one of the “classic” agricultural journals. On July 25, 1819, Thaer received from King Friedrich Wilhelm III. the right to provide the “ agricultural institute in Moegelin ” with the “ predicate of an academic teaching institution for agriculture ”. Following the example of the Möglin training center, similarly conceived agricultural academies were founded in the first decades of the 19th century, including in Eldena near Greifswald, in Proskau (Silesia), in Poppelsdorf , in Tharandt and in Hohenheim .

By 1825, the largely privately run Mögliner Academy had reached the peak of its development. Albrecht Daniel Thaer died in 1828. In 1830 his third son, Albrecht Philipp Thaer , took over the management of the teaching institute.

Minister of Education Altenstein reported as early as June 1832 that the educational establishment in Möglin "was rarely visited by actual cameralists, both because of the distance from the University of Berlin and because of its expensive use " and Minister of Education Eichhorn specified in December 1843 that from the Berlin “ Students of the camera sciences ” from “the year 1820 to the year 1830 only one student registered to visit the school in Möglin ”.

In January 1845 the was national economy college the " directory of Mögliner academics presented". The college gathered that in the past “ 11 years (1834/35 to 1844/45 incl.) The number of students was 176, that is, 16 on average per year. “Among them were“ 105 residents, 71 foreigners (8 from Austria, 29 from other German states, 17 from Russia, 4 from Poland, 7 from Sweden, 6 from Denmark). "

lectures

Director Thaer taught, for example, in the winter semester 1850/51 “ Agricultural trades, accounting, general cattle breeding, special sheep breeding and wool studies ”, in the summer semester 1851 “ Theory of agriculture, statics of agriculture, economic organization, special cattle, pig and horse breeding , Field and meadow culture, such as cultivation of the individual plants ”.

In April 1861, Director Thaer published the course catalog for the last summer semester before the Mögliner Academy was closed at the end of September that year. Then he read about “ The doctrine of vegetable production. Special cattle breeding (sic!). The doctrine of irrigation. Demonstrations of wool at sheep shearing. ", His son Albrecht Conrad Thaer took over" Agricultural Soil Science. Work and theory of tillage. Agricultural zoology. "And lecturer Reinhard taught" Organic Chemistry. Agricultural technology combined with visits to factories. Botany. Field measurement plus practical exercises in field measurements and leveling. "

closure

Due to the existence of the academies, which had meanwhile been newly founded in other places, and not least due to Möglin's geographically isolated location, which is now more important, the number of students, especially after 1850, decreased significantly. For economic reasons, the Thaer family could hardly carry out organizational and scientific renovation measures.

Albrecht Philipp Thaer saw his “establishment in Möglin ” as early as November 1844 “ going towards decline, when it is overshadowed by all other agricultural academies by the fact that they are raised through very large monetary expenditures, but they, the Royal Academy of Agriculture is condemned to be able to remain in the same place on which it was placed in 1805/6. "

Two months after the appointment of the ministers of the New Era , at a time when his father was "erected in the capital ", Albrecht Philipp Thaer proposed in January 1859, Agriculture Minister Pückler , to transform Möglin's private character into a more state one .

55 years after it was founded, in 1861, the teaching institute had to close its doors. The existing teaching collections and laboratory facilities were combined with the Berlin Agricultural Teaching Institute , which was newly founded in 1859 . From 1806 to 1861, a total of 773 students completed an agricultural course in the one-year course in Möglin. According to Albrecht Philipp Thaer's information to Agriculture Minister Pückler, " close to a thousand students were trained during this time ".

Albrecht Philipp Thaer wrote more clearly in April 1860 to Agriculture Minister Pückler that " this dissolution of Moeglin was not brought about by the internal weakness of the institution, but by the establishment and very rich equipment of the state educational institutions ".

literature

  • Bruno Skibbe: On the prehistory of the agricultural-horticultural faculty (1806 to 1881) . In: Scientific journal of the Humboldt University in Berlin, supplement to Volume 9, 1959/60, pp. 229-256.
  • Volker Klemm with the participation of Reinhard Deutsch, Paul Hagelschuer, Udo Kummerow, Ernst Lindemann and Kerstin Neumann: From the Royal Academy of Agriculture in Möglin to the Agricultural and Horticultural Faculty of the Humboldt University in Berlin . Publishing house of the Humboldt University Berlin 1998.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ GStA PK I. HA Rep. 87 B No. 12125 fol. 161 r
  2. ↑ GStA PK I. HA Rep. 89 No. 21616, fol. 1 r
  3. ↑ GStA PK I. HA Rep. 87 B No. 12126, fol. 193 r
  4. ↑ GStA PK I. HA Rep. 87 B No. 12127, fol. 29 v, fol. 34 r to 38 v
  5. ↑ GStA PK I. HA Rep. 87 B No. 12127, fol. 101 r
  6. ↑ Annals of Agriculture in the Royal Prussian States. Week sheet no. 15 of April 10, 1861. Volume I, p. 190
  7. ↑ GStA PK I. HA Rep. 87 B No. 12127, fol. 5 v
  8. ↑ GStA PK I. HA Rep. 87 B No. 12127, fol. 140 r, 142 r
  9. ↑ GStA PK I. HA Rep. 87 B No. 12127, fol. 153 r
  10. ↑ GStA PK I. HA Rep. 87 B No. 12127, fol. 165 r

Coordinates: 52 ° 40 ′ 2 ″  N , 14 ° 6 ′ 26 ″  E