Moor experimental station in Bremen

The moor experimental station in Bremen (now called the Soil Technology Institute ) is an agricultural research and experimental facility. The state (initially Prussian , later Lower Saxony ) institution has its headquarters in Bremen .

The aim and task of the station is to research the pedological , ecological , hydrogeological and other interrelationships in wasteland soils ( moorland , heather , marshland , ...) and their influence on plant growth. Based on the findings, the station developed and tested practical methods to cultivate such difficult soils and make them usable for agriculture.

The station in Bremen, founded in 1877, was the first moor test station in Germany. Numerous similar stations followed in other parts of Germany and abroad based on their model - but the station in Bremen retained the leading role in the field of peatland cultivation. The state-Lower Saxony Soil Technology Institute of the Lower Saxony State Office for Soil Research (NLfB) still exists today as the successor .

history

Seal of the moor research station Bremen

The station was founded in 1877 after a suggestion by Friedrich Nobbe , which was taken up by the Northwest German Society against Moor Burning , in particular Franz Buchenau , Gustav W. Focke and August Lammers , and followed up until it was implemented. On the advice of the Ministerial Director Eduard Marcard , the Prussian Agriculture Minister Friedenthal installed the experimental station as a state Prussian institution and assigned it to the recently founded Central Moor Commission for scientific advice and support. Since Bremen did not belong to Prussia and therefore could not actually be the seat of a state Prussian institution, a special cooperation agreement was concluded that allowed this.

In addition to the Prussian Ministry of Agriculture, the State of Bremen, the Natural Science Association , the Agricultural Association and the aforementioned Society against Moor Burning also contributed to the material, financial and staffing of the station . Initially, the station was fully called the Agricultural Research Station for Bog, Swamp and Heathland , later it was only briefly referred to as the Bog Research Station . In 1885, the station moved from its temporary location to a newly constructed building on Neustadtswall in the Alte Neustadt (at that time next to the State-Bremen Chemical Laboratory, near today's university ).

In addition to the administration building in Bremen, the station later had a second headquarters for the Emsland in Lingen as well as several outposts with open-air test areas and greenhouses in various moor areas (especially in the Teufelsmoor northeast of Bremen, near Lilienthal and Wörpedorf ).

From its founding until the end of the 19th century, the scientists at the Bremen Moor Research Station developed the German high moor culture , in which the moor was made usable for agriculture by a combination of drainage and soil improvement with artificial fertilizers and liming without prior peeling . The soil-conserving method represented a clear improvement compared to the peat brandy culture that had been widespread up to this point in time . The new method therefore quickly established itself as the standard method in northern Germany and other European countries at the beginning of the 20th century.

In the middle of the twentieth century, the Bremen moor scrub station developed together with the Ottomeyer company the German mixed sand culture , also called deep plow culture , in which deep plowing was used to mix the peat layer with the underlying sand layers and to break up the impermeable local stone layer . This process, with which raised bogs with a peat layer thickness of up to 2 meters could be converted into arable land, enabled the cultivation and colonization of many north German bogs in the 1950s to 1970s. In particular, the culture process formed an important basis for the Emsland plan .

As a result of the end of the Second World War in 1945, the State-Prussian became the State-Lower Saxony moor experimental station . The seat remained in Bremen, but in the middle of the 20th century it was relocated from the Alte Neustadt to the east of Bremen, to Friedrich-Mißler-Straße.

In 1969 a reorganization took place, in which the assignment of the station was shifted from the Lower Saxony Ministry of Agriculture to the State Office for Soil Research (NLfB) , which in turn is subordinate to the Ministry of Economics. At the same time, the station was renamed the Soil Technology Institute Bremen (BTI) .

Significant employees

The following scientists, among others, worked in the peat research station:

Heads (directors, supervisors) of the station:

• Moritz Fleischer , director 1877–1891
• Bruno Tacke , director 1891–1929
• Friedrich Brüne , head of the station 1929–1948; previously head of the agricultural department
• Werner Baden , director 1948–1973
• Herbert Kuntze , Head 1969–1995, previously Head of Department

Other employees:

• August Salfeld , from the establishment of the station in 1877, from 1884 head of the Emsland department in Lingen
• Heinrich Immendorff , head of the laboratory 1892–1900
• Carl Albert Weber , active in the botany department 1894–1924
• Carl Husemann , head of the agricultural department 1929–1949
• Karlhans Göttlich , scholarship holder in the early 1940s
• Gisbert Große-Brauckmann , curator 1958–1967

literature

About the moor research station

• Bruno Tacke: The moor experimental station . In: Bremen and its buildings . Part II. Schünemann, Bremen 1900, p. 356–359 ( digitized in SUUB ).
• Thorwald Kruckow: 100 years of peat research station external institute for peat research and applied soil science in Bremen . In: Treatises of the Natural Science Association in Bremen . tape 38 . Natural Science Association in Bremen, Bremen 1977.
• Bernhard Scheffer, Jörg Kues: 125 years of peatland and soil research in Bremen (=  workbooks - soil . Issue 3/2002). Swiss beard , Stuttgart 2002, DNB  994966555 .

Publications of the peat research station

• Staatliche Moor-Versuchsstation (Ed.): Announcements about the work of the Staatliche Moor-Versuchsstation in Bremen . Journal, 1952–1966. Schünemann, DNB  014139162 , OCLC 72962224 .
• Board of Trustees for State Moor experimental station in Bremen (ed.): Contributions to the improvement of the location from the state moor experimental station in Bremen . Journal, from 1967. State moor research station Bremen, Bremen, DNB  540056235 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Bremen's oldest research institution is 125 years old. From the peat research station to the soil technology institute in Bremen. Joint press release. Lower Saxony State Office for Soil Research, Soil Technology Institute Bremen, Press Office of the Senate of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen, August 9, 2002, accessed on April 24, 2013 .  
2. ^ ^{A b} Jörg Kues, Rüdiger Bartels: Grassland in the soil research of the NLfB in Bremen . In: Communications of the Working Group on Grassland and Forage Production . tape 1/1999 . Scientific publishing house, Giessen 1999, p. 7–12 ( grassland-organicfarming.uni-kiel.de [PDF]).
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Hansjörg Küster: History of the landscape in Central Europe: from the Ice Age to the present . 20th edition. CH Beck, 1999, ISBN 3-406-45357-0 , pp. 277 .
4. ↑ ^{a b c} Tacke 1900 (see literature)
5. ↑ ^{a b} The Natural Science Association - now and then. Natural Science Association of Bremen, accessed on April 15, 2013 .  
6. ^ Hubert Wania: Thirty Years of Bremen: 1876–1905 . Books on Demand, 2010, ISBN 978-3-86741-370-1 .
7. ^ ^{A b} Karlhans Göttlich, German Society for Moor and Peat Studies (ed.): Moor and peat science . 2nd Edition. Swiss beard, 1980.