Richard Geith

Richard Geith (born December 11, 1900 in Hamburg , † March 10, 1945 in Cegléd near Budapest ) was a German grassland and forage scientist .

Live and act

Richard Geith, son of a high school professor, completed an agricultural apprenticeship from 1919 to 1921 on a domain in the Hadersleben district after graduating from high school . He then studied agriculture at the University of Leipzig . As early as 1923 he was employed by the Saxon Chamber of Agriculture as managing director of the working group for grassland management in the Free State of Saxony. From 1925 he was also head of the information center for grassland management in Annaberg / Erzgebirge . In 1930 he did his doctorate with Gustav Falke at the University of Leipzig with a dissertation on land use systems in the Saxon Ore Mountains and in the Vogtland.

From 1929 Geith was managing director of the "Business Research Center for Grassland Management" affiliated with the Institute for Agricultural Management at the University of Leipzig . Here he worked closely with Friedrich Falke . He improved the method he first used to calculate the pasture yield, i.e. the net economic output of a pasture. With this method , later called the “ Falke-Geith Method ”, it was possible to make economic comparisons of pastures with arable land, but also to compare the yields of pasture farms with one another. Geith had a teaching position for pasture management at the University of Leipzig.

In 1939 Geith moved to Berlin and took on tasks in the Reichsnährstand . Since 1940, he has been director and professor of the Institute for Grassland Management of the newly founded Reich Research Institute for Alpine Agriculture in Admont ( Styria ). Geith published a variety of articles on pasture management in practical magazines. Of his more extensive publications, the “Grassland Primer” (1932), the brochure “Modern Pasture Management” (1937) and the study “The performance of German pastures and the sustainable improvement of their yields” (1941) , written together with Franz Zürn, should be emphasized .

Main publications

• The land use systems in the Saxon Ore Mountains and Vogtlande . Diss. Phil. Leipzig 1930. - Zugl .: Work of the Working Group for Grassland Management in the Free State of Saxony H. 13.
• Grassland primer. Practical instructions for the creation, maintenance and management of the grassland . Berlin 1932 = pamphlets of the German Agricultural Society, issue 30; 2. rework. Ed. (Together with K. Fuchs). Reichsnährstand Verlags-Gesellschaft Berlin 1936 = work of the Reichsnährstand, vol. 13; 3rd edition ibid. 1941; 4. u. 5th edition, ibid. 1943.
• Modern pasture management . Reichsnährstand Verlags-Gesellschaft Berlin 1937 = work of the Reichsnährstand, vol. 39; 2nd edition ibid. 1940; 3. u. 4th edition, ibid. 1943.
• The performance of the German pastures and the sustainable improvement of their yields (together with Franz Zürn). Reichsnährstand Verlags-Gesellschaft Berlin 1941 = Reports on Agriculture NF special issue 152.

literature

• Complete directory of German-language literature (GV) 1911–1965 Vol. 42, 1977, p. 322 (directory of independent scripts).
• Personnel files on Richard Geith in the Saxon Main State Archives in Dresden.

Web links

• Literature by and about Richard Geith in the catalog of the German National Library