Klein Wanzleben
A new life
for the old home
Even before German reunification, KWS sought contact with its cradle in Klein Wanzleben. A wide range of activities developed afterwards – beyond sugarbeet.
Even before German reunification, KWS sought contact with its cradle in Klein Wanzleben. A wide range of activities developed afterwards – beyond sugarbeet.
Klein Wanzleben: a myth cloaked in mystery, the origins of our family, yet a place that was also alien to us. A piece of us that did not belong to us (any more).” That was how Andreas Büchting described his feelings about KWS’ birthplace in the special issue of insideKWS entitled “Klein Wanzleben, KWS and Reunification” back in 2019. Klein Wanzleben, a small village in the fertile Magdeburger Börde plain, was where Matthias Christian Rabbethge, the great-great-great-grandfather of the outgoing Chairperson of the Supervisory Board, laid the foundations of today’s KWS 176 years ago. After being relocated and seeing the company expropriated, the family began rebuilding the company in Einbeck in 1945.
The history of sugarbeet in Klein Wanzleben then proceeded on a separate course. After the Red Army occupied the village at the end of July 1945, a whole host of senior employees of Rabbethge & Giesecke AG became victims of arbitrary acts by the occupying power. The Academy of Agricultural Sciences of the German Democratic Republic set up the Institute for Beet Research (IfR) there. The situation as regards the supply of sugar to the population and industry was critical. There was a shortage of labor. That is why the state authorities kept a close eye on the research work on sugarbeet breeding over the decades. The pressure to succeed was accordingly high.
Same starting material, inferior varieties
Starting with the same breeding material as Einbeck, the institute succeeded in 1963, after time-consuming, laborious selection work involving half a million plants, in launching the first monogerm sugarbeet variety in the whole of Germany. Despite considerable financial, material and personnel efforts to develop breeding methods and biotechnology processes, however, sugarbeet production in the GDR was never able to catch up with the world’s best. The performance of its own varieties in the 1980s was an average of eight to 10 percent below that of the best international ones.
Klein Wanzleben is an important part of the KWS family again.
The persons in charge therefore searched for suitable business partners. In view of the historical ties, the obvious step was to approach KWS. After initial cautious talks at a trade fair in 1982, the first delegation from Einbeck traveled to Klein Wanzleben in June 1985 – and Andreas Büchting was part of it. Unlike his father Carl-Ernst Büchting, he had few reservations about working with plant breeders from the neighboring socialist country.
Unofficial cooperation
This meeting marked the start of unofficial cooperation. The joint activities included not only exchange of seed for performance tests and propagation, but also breeding work, albeit on a small scale. The Institute for Beet Research sent three “travel cadres,” regime loyalists who were allowed to travel to the west and could be relied on not to defect, all of whom were also listed as unofficial collaborators with the State Security Service (Stasi), to the regular meetings in East and West. They regularly reported the professional knowledge they gleaned from these visits to their handlers. Although neither side gained any economic benefit from the cooperation, the existing ties proved to be very advantageous for the further future of the sugar village Klein Wanzleben when the wall fell.
When the border opened on November 9, 1989, a keen dialogue on future collaboration began immediately. So that KWS could return to its origins, however, a number of legal and organizational obstacles first had to be overcome, since the Institute for Beet Research and its movable and immovable assets were the property of the GDR. At the beginning of 1991, KWS returned to its roots after 47 years with the establishment of ZKW Züchtungsgesellschaft Klein Wanzleben mbH.
Millions invested in the new site
Although not absolutely necessary from a business point of view, the emotional attachment of various family members to Klein Wanzleben, above all of Carl-Ernst Büchting, who was born there, was still so strong that the required investments in this new location were never seriously questioned. Andreas Büchting, too, felt it was only natural to continue the family history there in a very concrete way, in this village which for him was a place steeped in legend about which, until his first visit, he had only an abstract idea from the many childhood stories he had heard.
Just over €20 million has been invested there over the past 33 years. Initially, priority was given to the demolition and renovation of existing buildings (administration building, seed processing), construction of a new beet laboratory and modernization of technical equipment. The station’s main tasks now include performance tests, production of basic sugarbeet seed in the open air and in polyhouses, rearing of stecklings, field emergence tests and analysis of beet pulp samples. Corn breeding has also been part of its portfolio since the acquisition of APZ – Anhaltinische Pflanzenzucht GmbH, Bernburg, in 2007. A large 1,600-hectare farm flanks these activities as a practical vehicle for demonstrating KWS’ varieties and know-how as part of customer acquisition. And so, 32 years after reunification, Klein Wanzleben is once again an attractive and important part of the KWS family. |
© KWS SAAT SE & Co. KGaA 2025
