BIOFECTOR

Participant 04:
 
Banat’s University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine from Timisoara (BUAS)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banat_University_of_Agricultural_Sciences_and_Veterinary_Medicine
Chair: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Gheorghe Posta Timisoara, Romania


Banat’s University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine from Timisoara is a state higher education institution that has the didactic mission to train specialists for scientific research in agricultural sciences and consultancy through the university extension. The second mission of our institution for experimental research in agricultural sciences and veterinary medicine. The research infrastructure of the group comprises experimental field sites as well as large scale protected cultural areas (greenhouses and solariums), agricultural machines and equipment for testing bio-effector products under realistic conditions for agricultural production.

Tasks: The working group is a main partner of the International BIOFECTOR Field testing Network (WP08).

† Prof. Dr. Dr. h c Karl Fritz Lauer 1938-2018		Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ciprian George Fora		Cornelia Chet

Appreciation of Karl Fritz Lauer, Leonberg, June 2018

Karl Fritz Lauer rendered outstanding service to European plant protection research and its teaching.

Lauer was born the son of a teacher in Sackselhausen, Romania, in 1938. Due to his family‘s flight during the Second World War he started school in Vienna in 1944.

On his return to Banat he attended primary school in Săcălaz, middle school for the food industry and then evening Lyceum in Timișoara where he passed his school-leaving exams.

His studies at the Agricultural Science University in Timișoara led to a Diploma in Agricultural Engineering (1965) and a Doctorate (Dr. agr.) under Gh. Anghel (1974). Lauer then worked for the Land Registry in Timisoara, completed his military sevice in Ploiești and worked at the Agricultural Experimental Station Lovrin.

After relocation to the German Federal Republic in 1981, he first worked as a scientist at the Botanical Institute of the University of Regensburg before taking over the management of scientific field research for southern Germany for Rhône-Poulenc (from 1983 to 1995). On retirement he opened his own research office and dedicated himself to relations between Romanian and European agricultural research.

After the fall of the iron curtain and abolition of the Ceausescu dictatorship he initiated the resumption of relations between the universities of Timişoara/Klausenburg and Hohenheim. Together with his old student friend Rector Emeritus und Academicus Păun Otiman he visited Minister Weiser in Stuttgart, the DEULA in Kirchheim and the firm Hege in Hohebuch, thereby obtaining research and harvesting equipment, including a Hege parcels planter and a Glas combine harvester. In addition, the state of  Baden-Wuerttemberg equipped a plant protection laboratory for him. He also persuaded German companies to finance doctoral students.

On top of this he found sufficient further sponsorship to revive the old agricultural school in Voiteg, near Timişoara, which had been grounded by Professor Münzinger, Hohenheim. Together with Păun Otiman he was an initiator of the re-opening in 2007 of the Ackerbauschule Vojteg, (Vojteg Agricultural School, and served on its advisory board until his death. In Voiteg there is a large plaque naming Paun Otiman und Karl Fritz Lauer as initiators of this revival.

In 1991 Lauer was appointed Honorary Professor for Plant Protection at the Agricultural University of Banat in Timișoara and he also taught this subject at the TU (Technical University) of Munich in Freising. From 1996 on he was a Lecturer in Herbology at the Fachhochschule Weihenstephan and supervised Ph. D. students at  Timișoara Agricultural University during their research and preparation of their dissertations, himself receiving an honorary doctorate as Dr. h. c.

It was Karl Lauer who, since the 1990s, visited Hohenheim with each new rector of Timisoara University   to confirm with its rector the relationship between the two universities.

The participation of Timisoara Agricultural University in the EU Biofector Project was due to his initiative, and in our last telephone conversation three days before his death, in which he told me that he was feeling better, he insisted that his Alma Mater Timişoara should definitely be included in the Biofector follow-up project. The fact that the experiments there with tomato and maize gave such positive results with bio-effectors is due to the work of our colleagues in Romania, but above all to the strategic consideration of  Karl Fritz Lauer concerning the experimental setup. His death leaves a huge gap in the field of plant protection in Germany, in German – Romanian agricultural relations, and particularly in our Biofector project.

We shall remember Karl Fritz Lauer with honour.   Manfred G. Raupp