Max Winckel

Max Winckel (born September 11, 1875 in Berleburg , Westphalia , † December 20, 1960 in Berlin-Grunewald ) was a German chemist and nutrition researcher .

Life

Max Winckel grew up as the son of a factory owner in Berleburg. He completed an apprenticeship as a pharmacist, then studied pharmacy and chemistry in Munich, Marburg, Zurich and Bern with a focus on food chemistry, hygiene and bacteriology. During his studies he became a member of the AGV Munich . In 1903 he received his doctorate in Bern with a thesis on the alleged occurrence of free phloroglucinol in plants . Until 1908 he worked as a chemist in Bregenz on Lake Constance, then he moved to Munich. After being sworn in as a commercial and court chemist, he set up a chemical laboratory there.

Winckel began in Munich with popular education lectures and articles that increasingly focused on questions of general nutrition. His ideas about a “correct” and “rational” diet followed the mainstream of nutritional science at the time , but also referred to the alternative approaches of the life reform movement . With the beginning of the First World War he offered his professional services to the Bavarian authorities without success and then wrote books and brochures for adequate war food. These were widely received, so that as a nutrition expert he was able to write further brochures on individual foods on behalf of various Reich authorities since 1915. Winckel concentrated mainly on the utilization of the yeast and the debittering of the lupine . In 1916 Winckel became head of the newly established laboratory of the War Food Society in Berlin. From 1919 he worked as a consultant for the German Agricultural Aid and as a technical employee in the field of mechanical engineering in the food industry.

During this time the plan intensified to publish a scientifically sound, but at the same time broadly effective, specialist nutrition journal. After the inflation, in 1925 Die Volksernahrung started (since 1931 magazine for people nutrition and dietetics , since 1934 magazine for people nutrition ) in the Berlin publishing house Rotgießer & Diesing . It reached a circulation of up to 6,000 (1931) and was the most important nutrition journal of the interwar period under the editorship of Winckels. Winckel wrote more than 300 articles on almost all subjects of nutrition. Since then he has been one of the leading nutrition experts in the German Reich. In 1927 he was able to secure the financing of the Berlin exhibition “Diet,” which in 1928 was a great public success. In 1929, Winckel also designed the nutrition departments for the traveling exhibition “Technology in the Home”. The aim in each case was a “rational” diet based on the latest findings in vitamin theory and the national nutritional principles.

At the end of the 1920s, Winckel also tried to anchor nutrition education institutionally. He was the initiator and co-founder of the “Reichsverein Volksernahrung” founded in 1928 and the “International Working Group for the Study of Folk Nutrition”, also launched in 1928. While the latter was more scientifically oriented, the Reichsverein aimed at nutrition and diet courses on site, that is, a popularization of the "new nutrition theory". In 1931 these efforts were institutionalized with the establishment of the “School of Nutrition” in Berlin. Winckel created curricula and teaching materials, but was also regularly present on the radio with popular lectures in the late 1920s.

The admission to power of the National Socialists did not end these activities, because Winckel willingly adapted to the new circumstances. The existing institutions were integrated into state-corporatist structures as part of the coordination . Winckel supported the National Socialist agricultural and food policy. Jewish employees could no longer publish and teach, the magazine for folk nutrition and dietetics and Winckel himself acted strictly against alternative diets. The Nazi policy was also systematically supported in the context of war armament, especially since the four-year plan in 1936. Even during the Second World War, Winckel remained an advisor, representative and propagandist for state nutrition policy. Winckel even supported the transfer of the magazine for people's nutrition to the magazine for community catering in 1944 .

After the Second World War, Winckel continued to work as a publicist and consultant. In 1947/48 he was managing director of the food industry department of the German Agricultural Society , and in 1951 he was able to re-establish the “Arbeitsgemeinschaft Volksernahrung”. He was one of the many nutrition experts during the Nazi era, whose preparatory work led to the establishment of the German Nutrition Society in 1953 .

Fonts

• War and people feeding. Munich 1914.
• War Book of the People's Nutrition. Munich 1915.
• The lupine and its importance for agriculture and folk nutrition. Berlin 1920.
• Nutrition. Gotha 1930.
• The German people's food and nutrition. Berlin 1934.
• Life and nutrition. Berlin 1938.
• Folk Nutrition Biology. Berlin 1947.

literature

• International Society for the History of Pharmacy: Publications of the International Society for the History of Pharmacy e. V., in: Volume 55 of publications of the International Society for the History of Pharmacy e. V, Wissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft, Stuttgart, 1986, p. 453.
• Dirk Reinhard, Uwe Spiekermann: The "Journal for People's Nutrition" 1925–1939. History and bibliographical indexing. In: Andreas A. Bodenstedt u. a .: Materials to determine nutritional behavior. Karlsruhe 1997, pp. 74-175, v. a. Pp. 75–76 (with further literature).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Association of Alter SVer (VASV): Address book. Membership directory of all old men. As of October 1, 1937. Hanover 1937, p. 191.