They stayed and suffered

The victorious allied forces met up at Klein Wanzleben toward the end of the Second World War. The area around Magdeburg had first been occupied by the Ninth U.S. Army from the west almost a month before Germany’s capitulation, whereas the Red Army took the east of the city in May. When British troops replaced the Americans at the beginning of June 1945, it was already certain they would also not stay long: The Allies had already agreed at the Yalta Conference in February that Germany was to be divided and this region would be part of the Soviet Occupation Zone as of July 1945.

Since the British knew very precisely how valuable Klein Wanzleben’s seed and breeding know-how were, they hurriedly arranged for half of the highly-bred and elite sugarbeet seed stored there to be removed before they withdrew. In a cloak-and-dagger operation, they also transferred the company’s owners – the members of the Rabbethge and Büchting families – as well as other biologists and breeders with their families, to the Rotenkirchen estate near Einbeck, which was located in their sphere of influence.

When they bade farewell in Klein Wanzleben, the employees who were leaving and those remaining hoped the separation would only be short-lived. Yet it turned out otherwise – in some cases with tragic consequences for those who stayed behind in Klein Wanzleben. When the Red Army moved in, the seed company in Klein Wanzleben was immediately expropriated and broken up at the command of the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAD).

A particularly dark chapter from the initial period of Soviet occupation was the unfair trials in which arbitrary sentences were handed down to former executive employees of the company who had kept it running from July 1945 on and were now often accused of being fascists. Their fates and names are now largely forgotten. The 30th anniversary of the fall of the wall is a welcome occasion to remember at least some of them. And to express the gratitude due to them.

Autocratic and arbitrary state acts

The head of the germination station and highly esteemed trial field technician Friedrich Vellgut did not return from a field inspection in the late summer of 1945 and disappeared without trace. It later transpired that he had been arrested. He died in Brandenburg Prison after two months in jail. Friedrich Voigt was chief accountant at Rabbethge & Giesecke AG and was thus responsible for all the company’s financial matters. He was arrested in 1945 and died after three years in jail at Bautzen Prison.

Two executive employees who had rendered great service to the company likewise suffered a sad fate under socialist rule after 1945.

Director Friedbert Brukner (1899–1953), praised as one of the best and brightest minds in the German sugar industry in his obituary, had turned the sugar factory in Klein Wanzleben into one of the most successful in Germany. Friedbert Brukner was dismissed together with Friedrich Voigt due to criminal violations of instructions from SMAD and arrested immediately. From Torgau Prison, he was moved to Sachsenhausen Prison and from there to the notorious camp in Waldheim, where he succumbed to the disastrous detention conditions after seven years of undeserved suffering.

The imprisonment of Gerhard Lindner, who had been head of the laboratory for many years, also ended tragically. In many years of cooperation with the Institute for Sugar Industry in Berlin, he had led internationally acclaimed trials to improve the technological quality of sugarbeet. He was arrested in Klein Wanzleben in 1945 and taken to Magdeburg Prison. After becoming infected with bone tuberculosis there, he was released, only to die from his illness a little later in Klein Wanzleben.

KWS’ archive has preserved letters from wives the victims left behind showing how deeply these arbitrary measures impacted their families. GDR historiography concealed these crimes against humanity. KWS gave the two widows financial support from Einbeck, as the letters reveal.

Successful escape

The fate of Fritz Otto Brandt, who prevented the collapse of sugarbeet breeding in Klein Wanzleben after the war, took a different turn. He was also arrested and charged. The prosecutors wanted to stage his case as a show trial, but instead it degenerated into a farce. The large laboratory room in Klein Wanzleben was emptied and 400 “workers” were invited to the hearing. While the long pleading list of charges was being read, loud boos were constantly heard from the assembled crowd and the presiding judge twice threatened to have the room cleared immediately. Unfortunately, those demonstrations of sympathy were of little help to Fritz Otto Brandt – he was sentenced to seven years in jail.

However, the authorities had ignored the fact that Fritz Otto Brandt was indispensable to sugarbeet breeding in the east. Significant deficits in this field soon became manifest. In view of the precarious situation, a number of members of the Executive Committee of the German Academy of Agricultural Sciences called for the verdict against Fritz Otto Brandt to be quashed. He was released from jail after that intervention and resumed his work at the Institute for Plant Breeding that had been established in the meantime.

KWS in Einbeck had heard about Fritz Otto Brandt’s fate. Carl-Ernst Büchting, KWS’ Chief Executive Officer at the time, said in a conversation: “We let him know he’d be very welcome here.” Since Fritz Otto Brandt feared he would be rearrested, he packed his bags and, accompanied by his wife and two children, took the train to East Berlin and from there the suburban train to West Berlin. He was then quickly flown out of the city. He worked successfully in Einbeck in technical development of new varieties until he retired. |