Foundation fiat panis - Hans Hartwig Ruthenberg- Graduate Award

Hans-Hartwig Ruthenberg was born on March 19, 1928 and grew up in Danzig. As an anti-aircraft helper, he was drafted in 1944 and came into Russian war prison in the spring of 1945. In the late autumn of 1945 he was released from his captivity in a severely ill manner and has gone to West Germany. From 1946 to 1949 he worked as an agricultural worker in Schleswig-Holstein and completed High School. Afterwards, he studied agricultural science in Göttingen from 1949 to 1954, was an assistant to Prof. Woermann (agricultural production economics) and graduated with a doctorate. He completed his postgraduate studies in the USA followed by a research stay in Southeast Asia. During his time as an assistant at the Institute for Foreign Agriculture at the Technical University of Berlin, he had been conducting research visits to various countries of East Africa. In 1965 he received his habilitation from the University of Goettingen and became professor at the Chair for Economics of Agricultural Production in the Tropics and Subtropics at the University of Hohenheim in 1966 and succeeded Prof. Dr. J. G. Knoll (1899-1976), after whom the European Science-Award is named.

In the following years, he also worked abroad: 1974 Visiting professor at the World Bank's Economic Development Institute and 1976 adviser to the government of Kenya. His fields of research included: land use systems of the Tropics and Subtropics, agricultural development policy and irrigation economics. His "project theory" was groundbreaking.

Some of his publications include titles such as "African Agricultural Production Development Policy in Kenya" (1966), "Smallholder Farming and Smallholder Development in Tanzania" (1968), "Farming Systems in the Tropics" (1971). From 1965 to 1975 he was co-editor of the African studies of the IFO-Institute Munich.

Shortly before his death, he had been appointed to a working group of the CGIAR, which was commissioned to design concepts for international agricultural research in the 1980s.

At the age of 52 years, Prof. Ruthenberg passed away on July 13, 1980 and left his wife with four children.

In 1982 the Justus Liebig University of Giessen awarded its development prize for the first time and posthumously to Prof. Ruthenberg for his outstanding achievements for his research on farming systems in tropical and subtropical countries and for making use of these findings for practical development policy.