Richard Krzymowski

Richard Krzymowski (born September 5, 1875 in Winterthur , † August 26, 1960 in Rostock ) was a German agricultural scientist . His main research interests were agricultural geography and agricultural history .

Life path

Richard Krzymowski was the son of the high school teacher Josef Krzymowski from Łask in Poland. He took part in the unsuccessful January uprising of the Poles against Russian oppression and therefore had to flee abroad. He studied mathematics at the Polytechnic in Zurich and then worked as a teacher at the Cantonal Schools in Zug and later in Winterthur . In 1870 he received Swiss citizenship . He lost his first wife to a typhus epidemic. In 1874 he married Lucie, née Brockmann, who came from the old Frisian Brockmann family and came from Lübeck. Together they had three sons and two daughters. In 1902 his siblings took over the name of their mother Lucie Brockmann. He was the only one of the siblings to keep his father's name. His brother was the botanist Heinrich Brockmann-Jerosch .

After working in agriculture in Switzerland, Krzymowski studied agriculture at the University of Hohenheim and the University of Halle . From 1899 he worked as an agriculture teacher in Alsace, where he researched the crop rotation of the Altkirch district and received his doctorate with a paper on it in 1905 under Wilhelm Edler at the University of Jena . He then worked for a year as an assistant to Conrad von Seelhorst at the Agricultural Institute of the University of Göttingen . In 1906 he returned to Alsace-Lorraine. Through further publications he made a name for himself as an agricultural geographer .

In 1918 Krzymowski completed his habilitation at the University of Strasbourg . In 1922 he took over the chair for agricultural management at the University of Breslau as full professor . For political reasons he took early retirement in 1936. In January 1945 he was evacuated from besieged Breslau leaving all his personal effects behind. He found a new home in Rostock . Until 1952 he was a lecturer in agricultural history at the University of Rostock .

Research concept

The inclusion of agricultural history and agricultural geography in the teaching and research area of ​​agricultural sciences was the central concern of Krzymowski's scientific work. He saw not only the scientific experiment, but also the description of historical and geographical conditions as an important method for gaining knowledge in the agricultural sciences.

Krzymowski's main work is a "History of German Agriculture" published several times, an exemplary textbook for an integrated presentation of agricultural history, agricultural geography and the history of agricultural production techniques. Krzymowski was an honorary doctor from the University of Giessen. The Agricultural Faculty of the University of Göttingen awarded him the Albrecht Daniel Thaer Medal in 1955 .

Fonts

• Agriculture in the Altkirch district in Upper Alsace . Diss. Phil. Jena 1905. Zugl. as a book at the Paul Parey publishing house in Berlin 1905.
• Philosophy of Agriculture . Publishing bookstore Eugen Ulmer Stuttgart 1919.
• History of German Agriculture . Verlagbuchhandlung Eugen Ulmer Stuttgart 1939. 2nd edition, ibid. 1951; 3rd edition Duncker & Humblot Berlin 1961.

literature

• Gertrud Schröder-Lembke: Richard Krzymowski on his 80th birthday . In: Journal of Agricultural History and Agricultural Sociology, Vol. 3, 1955, pp. 97–99.
• E. Gerhardt: In memory of Richard Krzymowski (1875-1960) . In: Gießener Hochschulblätter Vol. 8, 1960, No. 2/3, pp. 7–8.
• Heinz Haushofer : Richard Krzymowski † . In: Zeitschrift für Agrargeschichte und Agrarsoziologie Vol. 9, 1961, pp. 98–99.
• Gertrud Schröder-Lembke:  Krzymowski, Richard. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 13, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1982, ISBN 3-428-00194-X , p. 154 ( digitized version ).

Web links

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