Dear Readers,

On November 9, 1989, as the wall crumbled and broke, I returned in the evening from a trip abroad and, with my wife Edith, watched spellbound and at times in tears as the incredible events at the suddenly open border checkpoints unfolded. The unimaginable had happened overnight. Of course, our thoughts centered on Klein Wanzleben.

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). My great-great-great-grandfather Matthias Christian Rabbethge laid the foundation for our family business as a farmer there back in 1847; in 1945 we were expropriated and everything was rebuilt as KWS in Einbeck.

Since the beginning of the 1980s, there had been business relations between KWS and the Institute for Beet Breeding (IfR) based in Klein Wanzleben in the GDR era, but now we could look forward to a very special sort of “reunification.” To this day, our company bears the name of the place where it was founded in the initials KWS, which stand for Klein Wanzlebener Saatzucht.

Three decades have now passed since the wall came down – an anniversary that is a welcome occasion to look at the various changes this location, which is so significant for sugarbeet breeding in Germany, has undergone from 1945 to the present day.

In his article, Erhard Junghans recalls employees who remained in Klein Wanzleben in 1945 and who suffered dreadfully from their lives being broken under state repression. Sugarbeet breeding in the German Democratic Republic was still focused in Klein Wanzleben at the Institute for Beet Research. Two articles examine how the GDR tried for decades to catch up with the world leaders in the field of sugarbeet breeding and sugar production – legally, such as through a partnership with KWS from the 1980s on, but also by illegal means. Betina Meißner has examined more than 1,000 pages of the East German State Security Service’s files on “Operation Crystal,” in which organized seed theft was conducted for years under the strictest of secrecy. Her contribution reads like a white-collar crime thriller and provides an insightful demonstration of how the GDR’s internal intelligence arm operated. KWS has invested more than €20 million in Klein Wanzleben since 1991. Wolfgang Joachim takes stock of how the station has evolved into a key breeding location of KWS over the past three decades.

I am delighted that we, as a forward-looking company, have the chance to present our history and origins, and I thank Erhard Junghans and Wolfgang Joachim for their initiative that gave rise to this publication.

I hope that you as a reader will gain a closer understanding of the myths surrounding Klein Wanzleben and even have the occasion to see the place for yourself.

Yours,

Betina Meißner

The historian and journalist specializes in corporate history and has written regularly for KWS for almost 15 years.

Erhard Junghans

is the memory man when it comes to KWS’ history in Klein Wanzleben. The sugar technologist worked in the chemical lab at the Institute for Beet Breeding for 25 years. After reunification, he was head of its beet laboratory for nine years. He sorted and systematized KWS’ archive there up to 2016.