Otto Graff (zoologist)

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Otto Graff (with his wife Irmgard), 1997

Otto Emil Wilhelm Graff (born August 17, 1917 in Steglitz ; † January 3, 2014 in Braunschweig ) was a German zoologist and soil scientist . From 1949 to 1980 he was employed at what was then the Research Institute for Agriculture in Braunschweig-Völkenrode (now the Johann Heinrich von Thünen Institute ). His main field of work was the ecology of the soil animals of agricultural soils . The focus was on the humus economy and the ecology of earthworms . After his habilitation in the agricultural sciences department at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen , he also worked as a university lecturer in Giessen .

Career

Otto Graff attended elementary school in Mannheim from 1924 to 1927 , then the humanistic Karl-Friedrich-Gymnasium in Mannheim until he graduated from high school in 1936 . After a few months in the Reich Labor Service , he did military service with Artillery Regiment 51 in Hanau and Fulda from October 1936 to October 1938 . In November 1938, Graff began a commercial apprenticeship at the pharmaceutical company Knoll AG (now part of Abbott Laboratories ) in Ludwigshafen am Rhein . As early as August 1939, however, due to mobilization , he was drafted back into the Wehrmacht and deployed in various units, mainly on the Eastern Front, until the Wehrmacht surrendered . During this time he was wounded four times, the last time seriously; for this reason he was spared a longer imprisonment .

After the third wound, Graff was granted study leave from October 1942 to spring 1943, so that he could study biology at the University of Munich for a semester . In the winter semester 1945/46 he was able to continue studying biology at the University of Hamburg . In the summer semester of 1946 he moved to the Technical University of Braunschweig , where a zoological institute had just been established. In addition to biological subjects, his studies focused on chemistry . His teachers included the botanist Gustav Gassner , the zoologist Gerhard von Frankenberg and the chemist Hans Herloff Inhoffen .

In February 1950, Graff finished his studies with his doctorate as Dr. rer. nat. with a thesis on "The earthworms in the area around Braunschweig and their significance for agriculture". As early as 1949 he was employed under Walter Sauerlandt as a research assistant at the Institute for Humus Management (later renamed Institute for Soil Biology) at the Research Institute for Agriculture in Braunschweig-Völkenrode. Otto Graff later held the first post for soil zoology in agriculture and compost management in an agricultural research institute.

In 1964 he completed his habilitation in the agricultural sciences department at the Justus Liebig University in Gießen with the title “Investigations into soil fauna in arable soils”. He then worked as a university lecturer in Giessen until his retirement. His doctoral students included Franz Makeschin , now a professor of soil science at the TU Dresden, and Ghassem-Ali Omrani (now a professor at the Tehran University of Medical Sciences ).

Otto Graff had been with Irmgard Graff since July 20, 1944 . Karsten who died on January 20, 2018. The couple had three children, ten grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren. For decades Otto Graff was chairman of the handicapped at the Research Institute for Agriculture. Since 1980 he lived in Braunschweig-Völkenrode in retirement. He died on January 3, 2014 in a hospital in Braunschweig.

Research priorities

Otto Graff's main research areas were faunistic studies on soil animals and agroecological studies. He also dealt with the history of earthworm research in the 18th and 19th centuries, specifically with the effect of Darwin's study of the formation of soil by the activity of worms and with the work of Victor Hensen . Among other things, Graff confirmed through experiments Darwin's assumption that the tubes dug by earthworms are later preferably traversed by plant roots, since there - in the linings of the tubes and the excrement - there is a particularly large amount of organic fertilizer.

In 1966 Graff organized the International Soil Zoological Colloquium at the Research Institute for Agriculture, which was attended by more than 120 researchers. In 1970/71, as a consultant for the FAO for microbiology, during a research stay in Kuwait , he investigated the suitability of untreated and treated urban wastewater for the production of fresh vegetables.

Otto Graff was a member of the German Soil Science Society and the Society for Agricultural History . After retiring from the service of the Research Institute for Agriculture, he was president of the "Association for the Promotion of the Utilization of Worm Cultures" for five years.

Fonts (selection)

Technical article

  • The earthworms around Braunschweig and their importance for agriculture. Dissertation, Techn. Univ. Braunschweig, 1950, 87 pp.
  • Contribution to the knowledge of the German lumbricid fauna. In: Zoologischer Anzeiger. Volume 151, No. 1-2, 1953, pp. 25-28
  • Soil zoological studies with special consideration of terrific oligochaetes. In: Z. Pflanzenern. Fertilizer. Bodenenkde. Volume 106, 1953, pp. 72-77
  • The earthworm fauna in eastern Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein. In: Contributions to the natural history of Lower Saxony. Volume 7, No. 2, 1954, pp. 48-56
  • Another contribution to the knowledge of the German lumbricid fauna. In: Zoologischer Anzeiger. Volume 161, 1958, pp. 288-291
  • The earthworms (Oligochaeta Lumbricdae) on the premises of the Research Institute for Agriculture Braunschweig-Völkenrode. In: Landbauforschung Völkenrode. Volume 11, 1961, pp. 19-22
  • Earthworm test for the biological testing of wastewater. In: water and food. Volume 4, 1956/57, pp. 3-7
  • Investigations into the soil fauna in arable soils. Habil.-Schr. Agricultural Faculty Univ. Giessen, 1964
  • About the shift of nutrients into the subsoil due to earthworm activity. In: Landw. Forsch. Volume 20, 1967, pp. 117-127
  • Earthworm activity in the arable soil under different cover material, measured by the solution deposit. In: Pedobiologia. Volume 9, 1969, pp. 120-127
  • The influence of different mulch materials on the nutrient content of earthworm tubes in the subsoil. In: Pedobiologia. Volume 10, 1970, pp. 305-319
  • Do earthworm tubes affect plant nutrition? In: Landbauforsch. Völkenrode. Volume 21, 1971, pp. 103-108
  • Obtaining biomass from waste materials by cultivating the compost earthworm Eisenia foetida . In: Landbauforsch. Völkenrode. Volume 24, 1974, pp. 137-142
  • with R. Aldag: N fractions in earthworm solution and their soil of origin. In: Pedobiologia. Volume 15, 1975, pp. 151-153
  • Interrelationships between earthworm activity and plants. In: Tüxen, R. (Ed.): Vegetation and Fauna. Cramer, Vaduz, 1977, pp. 105-118
  • Physiological races in Eisenia foetida? A contribution to the question of domestication of this kind. In: Revue d'Écologie et de Biologie du Sol. Volume 15, 1978, pp. 251-263
  • with O. Hartge: The contribution of the fauna to the mixing and loosening of the soil. In: Communications of the German Soil Science Society. Volume 18, 1974, pp. 447-460
  • with F. Makeschin: influencing the yield of ryegrass (Loliummultiflorum) by excretions of earthworms of three different species. In: Pedobiologia. Volume 20, 1980, pp. 176-180

Books

  • Germany's earthworms. Series of publications by the Research Institute for Agriculture Braunschweig-Völkenrode, No. 7, Verlag M. & H. Schaper, Hannover 1953, 81 pp.
  • Our earthworms. Lexicon for friends of soil biology. Schaper Verlag, Hanover 1983
  • History of organic fertilization. From Stercutus to today. AGRARIA - Studies on Agroecology, Vol. 15. Verlag Dr. Kovač, 1995
  • with Rhea Graff: The pet dung in heating and heating technology. Lulu.com, 2007, ISBN 978-1847998378

Educational films

  • Lumbricus terrestris (Lumbricidae). E 2714 Locomotion and diet. E. 2715 mating. DVD videos, color, 16 min. FWU / IWF , Göttingen, 1973.

literature

  • H. Franz: The history of soil zoology and its inclusion in soil science. In: Geoderma. Vol. 12, No., 4, 1974, pp. 299-309
  • Stefan Schrader, Monika Joschko and Franz Makeschin: Obituary: Resolution of respect for Otto Graff (1917–2014). In: Pedobiologia. Volume 57, No. 3, 2014, pp. 195–196, doi: 10.1016 / j.pedobi.2014.03.004 (full text)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ braunschweiger-zeitung.de ( Memento from February 1, 2014 in the Internet Archive ): Obituary. Accessed January 18, 2014
  2. ^ Otto Graff: Darwin on earthworms - the contemporary background and what the critics thought. In: JE Satchell (Ed.): Earthworm Ecology. From Darwin to Vermiculture. London, New York: Chapman and Hall, 1983
  3. ↑ Otto Graff: The earthworm question in the 18th and 19th centuries and the importance of Victor Hensen. In: Z. Agrargesch. Agricultural Sociol. Volume 27, 1978, pp. 232-243
  4. ↑ Monika Joschko & Otto Graff: The brownies of the soil. "Biological tillage" by earthworms. In: Landwirtschaft ohne Pflug (4), 1999, pp. 10-12
  5. ↑ Otto Graff, John Satchell (Ed.): Progress in soil biology: proceedings of the Colloquium on Dynamics of Soil Communities; Braunschweig-Völkenrode, 5.-10. September 1966. Braunschweig: Vieweg 1967; Amsterdam: North-Holland Pub.
personal data
SURNAME Graff, Otto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Graff, Otto Emil Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German zoologist and soil scientist
DATE OF BIRTH 17th August 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin-Steglitz
DATE OF DEATH January 3, 2014
Place of death Braunschweig