Otto Liebenberg

Otto Friedrich Liebenberg (born July 7, 1913 in Magdeburg , Province of Saxony , † September 3, 1993 in Leipzig ) was a German animal breeding scientist and university professor.

Live and act

Liebenberg attended elementary school and the Lessing-Oberrealschule in the Sudenburg district of his hometown and graduated in 1932 with the Abitur examination. This was followed by an agricultural apprenticeship and work as a business assistant on the manor Volkstedt (Eisleben) near Eisleben . In 1935 he was drawn to the Reich Labor Service and in the same year began studying agriculture at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), which he successfully completed in 1938 with an exam as a qualified farmer . He then went on to do a scientific job at the Institute for Animal Breeding and Dairy Production and received his doctorate in 1939 with a thesis in animal breeding at the agricultural department of the Natural Science Faculty of the MLU. sc. nat.

In the same year he followed his doctoral supervisor Gustav Frölich to the newly founded institute for animal breeding research in Dummerstorf near Rostock of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society (for the promotion of science and research, KWG), where he was initially a research assistant, passed the Prussian animal breeding manager examination in 1941 and became head of the artificial insemination department in 1943. After the end of the Second World War and approval by the Red Army , Liebenberg was head of animal production at Gut Dummerstorf, from 1947 a research assistant and soon head of department in the facility now known as the Central Research Institute for Animal Breeding. In 1950/51 he completed his habilitation at the Agricultural Faculty of the University of Rostock under Fritz Haring in the field of animal breeding (including keeping and feeding).

From 1950 to 1953 Liebenberg was director of the research and training institute for cattle farming in Ruhlsdorf b. Teltow (Brandenburg) and head of the associated test property. In addition, he held a teaching position for "Practical Feeding" at the Agricultural Faculty of the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena . In 1953 he moved back to Dummerstorf and worked as head of the cattle breeding department and deputy director of what is now the Institute for Animal Breeding Research of the German Academy of Agricultural Sciences (DAL) in Berlin . At the same time he was (part-time) professor with a teaching position for animal breeding at the institute of the same name at the University of Rostock (succeeding Fritz Haring).

In 1957 he was appointed professor with a chair for animal breeding and director of the institute for animal breeding and domestic animal genetics at the agricultural and horticultural faculty of the Humboldt University of Berlin (succeeding Wilhelm Stahl ). Then in 1960 Liebenberg took over the chair for general and special animal breeding and the management of the institute for animal breeding and dairy farming (in the successor to Gustav Comberg ) based in the teaching and experimental farm in Oberholz of the agricultural faculty of the Karl Marx University Leipzig (KMU ). After the III. University reform of the GDR with the dissolution of the previous structures, he became full professor for cattle breeding and husbandry in 1969 and head of the teaching group for cattle breeding and from 1972 of the specialist group for general animal breeding and / or of teaching area III for animal breeding and husbandry in the animal production and veterinary medicine section of the SMEs Leipzig. In 1978 he took age-related retirement.

Liebenberg was one of the last East German professors who dealt with all important breeds of livestock. At first he mainly worked in cattle breeding and was a founder of artificial insemination in Germany. But in around 30 years of his teaching activity he included the other animal species and general animal breeding. After all, he worked at seven different institutions and successfully closed the gaps that other people had left behind when they were appointed to new positions.

Honorary positions

• 1960–78 President of the Agricultural Society of the GDR (awig)
• 1963 temporarily member of the Council for Agriculture, later for Agriculture and Food Industry of the GDR and the Agriculture Commission at the Central Committee of the SED
• 1963–68 (or 73) Secretary of the Animal Breeding, Animal Nutrition and Fisheries Section at DAL in Berlin
• 1966–72 editor-in-chief of the magazine "Tierzucht"
• 1966–72 Chairman of the Research Association for Mechanical Milk Production
• 1967–68 Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture at KMU Leipzig
• Activity as chairman / reporter at GDR elites and breeding events

Fonts (selection)

• Evaluation of the results of the milk performance tests in the herds of the Insel parent breeding cooperative. Natural science Diss. Univ. Halle, 1939. In: Berlin: Parey, Kühn-Archiv, Vol. 55, H. 2, pp. 143-252
• The influence of different environmental factors on the fertility of the father animals with special consideration of the sperm picture. Hab.-Schr. Agricultural Faculty Rostock, 1951, 163 pages: Radebeul u. Berlin: Neumann, 1953, 87 pages; 2nd edition 1954, 87 pp.
• The insemination of domestic animals, especially cattle. Radebeul u. Berlin: Neumann, 1952–1956, 2 editions
• The pig feeding. Berlin: Deutscher Bauernverlag, 1953
• Our cattle breeds: Small illustrated cattle breeding theory. With Karl-Heinz Roszak. Berlin: Deutscher Bauernverlag, 1956
• Breeding possibilities for increasing the performance of cattle and pigs. Berlin, 1961.
• Reproductive Biology and Insemination. With Horst Göhler. Leipzig-Markkleeberg, 1962, 1966, 2 editions
• Animal breeding, part 4. Cattle husbandry and breeding / 1, Berlin: Deutscher Landwirtschaftsverlag, 1963; Part 5. Cattle husbandry and breeding / 2, 1963, 2nd ed., 1964, 8th ed. 1968;
• Judging the cattle. Radebeul: Neumann, 1963, (animal breeding internship, part 1), until 1969 in 3 editions
• Problems of behavioral research in animal breeding. With Klaus Scholz, Berlin: German Academy of Agricultural Sciences, 1966,
• Cattle production. With Barbara Laugwitz. Radebeul: Neumann, 1974, 336 pp.

Awards / honors

• 1960 Patriotic Order of Merit in bronze
• 1960 Honored breeder of the GDR
• 1961 full member of the German Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Berlin (DAL), from 1972 Academy of Agricultural Sciences of the GDR (AdL)
• 1975 Honored university lecturer in the GDR
• 1978 Patriotic Order of Merit in Gold
• 1981 Honorary Senator of the University of Leipzig
• Erwin Baur Medal from the German Academy of Sciences in the GDR

literature

• Theophil Gerber: Personalities from agriculture and forestry, horticulture and veterinary medicine - Biographisches Lexikon. NORA Berlin, 4th ext. Ed., 2014, p. 447.
• Eberhard Schulze: The agricultural sciences at the University of Leipzig 1945 / 46–1996. Leipzig, 2nd edition 2008, pp. 152–158

Web links

• Entry on Otto Liebenberg in the Catalogus Professorum Rostochiensium
• Otto Liebenberg in the professorial catalog of the University of Leipzig

Individual evidence

1. ^ German Pig Museum Ruhlsdorf ( Memento from September 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
2. ^ Norbert Liebenberg, Leipzig: personal communications