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LORE KUTSCHERA

Expansion of en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lore_Kutschera, which is a very incomplete English translation of the German original wiki lemma: de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lore_Kutschera?veaction=edit

Dr. Lore Kutschera (b. 14 September 1917, Villach, d. 16 October 2008, Klagenfurt) was an Austrian botanist, ecologist, phytosociologist, and educator known for her research of plant root systems and phytosociology in agricultural contexts. In 1962 she received her doctorate at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, and later in life received several state awards form Klagenfurt for her scientific achievements. In 1982, she founded the International Society of Root Research.

Education and Career

Lore Belani, daughter of a civil engineer, attended the Gymnasium in Villach, Austria, and passed her matriculation exam in 1935. In that same year, she enrolled in the Polytechnic for Applied Life Sciences and Natural Resources at Vienna, to study agriculture. She graduated in 1939, obtaining the degree of engineer. She went on to become a research assistant at the Institute for Applied Phytosociology in Villach, where she was in charge of attempts to improve Alpine pastures by means phytosociological methods. Lore Kutschera worked for the federal government of Kärnten from 1945 to 1953, initially in the service of Austrian schools, and from 1950 onwards for the Federal Office for Spatial Planning. Her assignment was to describe and map the area of the Keutschacher Moor and the surrounding Keutschacher Seental in a monograph and to design a business plan for further development of the area. For three years on end, she committed herself fully to this task. In 1953 she founded a private Phytosociological Institute in Klagenfurt, which functioned as a consultancy for farms. Her consultancy work strongly enhanced her scientific interest in the root systems of plants.

In 1953 Lore Kutschera went on sabbatical leave to the USA. She made the acquaintance of the plant ecologist John Ernest Weaver at the University of Nebraska, who was a leading root researcher at the time. Together with other botanists, he exerted a shaping influence on her  research. In the following years, she developed a special excavation technique to unearth the roots of many agricultural crops and weeds. She also documented the distribution of space between the two as determined by environmental factors. As the first fruit of these labours, the Root Atlas of Mid-European Agricultural Weeds and Crops appeared in 1960, a manual that established her scientific reputation as a root researcher.

From 1961 onwards Lore Kutschera led the newly founded department for Botany and Phytosociology at the Federal Institution for Alpine Agriculture in Gumpenstein at Irdning, Austria. In 1962 she obtained her PhD degree from the University for Applied Life Sciences and Natural Resources at Vienna. In 1969 she completed her Habilitation at the Botanical Institute of this university with a monograph titled Agricultural Companion Plants of Kärnten as a Basis for Localised Crops and Grasslands. In 1978 she obtained the degree of Extraordinary Professor. She retired from her service to the federal state and the university on December 31, 1982, but remained active in the area of root research until she died.

Research and Teaching

The focal point of her scientific work at Gumpenstein was applied phytosociology, as the core competence of scholarly inquiry into the cultivation of grasslands. This also applied to her professorship at the University for Applied Life Sciences and Natural Resources. She sparked an interest in topical phytosociological issues in both students and farmers on their numerous joint excursions. Applied phytosociology was first and foremost future-oriented eco-system research for her, which is applicable as such to all areas of agriculture, landscaping and conservationism. Lore Kutschera was an early advocate for conservationism, exploring the devastating effects of airborne pollution and excessive manuring on the growth of grassland plants in various publications.

For her, plant research was in the first place root research, but always with a view to companion planting. This until then barely explored specialization of botany became her core business after 1960. Gumpenstein provided her with the necessary institutional conditions for fundamental research into the ecology, sociology, morphology and anatomy of plant roots. She accommodated many enthusiastic fellow researchers at this institution. Erwin Lichtenegger became one of her closest collaborators, who drew the roots of plants that he had excavated in the wild with artistic precision in very fine lines that were true to nature even in their smallest minutiae. He produced the root drawings for the second volume in the Root Atlas series, in combination with the superterranean parts of plants. Their inquiries into the anatomy of root systems were supported for years on end by a third colleague, Monika Sobotik, who would eventually succeed Lore Kutschera at the Federal Institution Gumpenstein. Lichtenegger’s drawings may now be studied online at the repository of Wagening University, the Netherlands.

The most important output of their collaborative research was a monumental root atlas series. After the first two volumes which were published in 1960 and 1982, five more volumes were to follow between 1992 and 2009. The seventh volume with its elaborate exposition of the research methods and techniques for creating the spatial and anatomical root drawings now counts as a unique, outstanding achievement in the area of root research. Reviews repeatedly referred to this volume as the “Centennial Milestone of Root Research”. Most volumes contain extensive bibliographies referencing leading publications in the international field of root research. The bibliographies in these volumes also include all scientific publications by Lore Kutschera. Her experimental efforts to explain the geotropism of roots deserve special mention here. By observing plant roots in different climatological zones and by modelling, she succeeded in revealing how gravity, in combination with water uptake and emission of moisture, causes the geotropical curvatures of root growth.

To mark her retirement from her affiliation to the Federal Institute for Alpine Agriculture in Gumpenstein in September 1982, Lore Kutschera organised an International Root conference at Irdning, which inaugurated the International Society for Root Research. Kutschera was elected as its first vice-president. In 1991 she organised the third conference of this interdisciplinary research society and followed up with the publication of its voluminous conference proceedings.

Lore Kutschera continued to attend scientific conferences, present papers and participate in field research well into old age. The last years of her life were devoted to finalizing the seventh volume in the Root Atlas series. She was a member of diverse botanical research societies, including  the Gesellschaft für Planzenbauwissenschaften (the Society for the Scientific Cultivation of Plants).

Private Life

Lore Belani’s adolescence was tied in with national socialism, in that she was an active member of the Bund Deutscher Mädel  As age 25, she married engineer and SS-officer Friedrich Wilhelm Kutschera in 1942, who never returned from the front and was officially declared ‘missing’ in 1945. Other than that, not much is known about her private life. This was a life fully devoted to root research.

References

Main works by Kutschera:


 * Lore    Kutschera: Wurzelatlas mitteleuropäischer Ackerunkräuter und     Kulturpflanzen (= 1. Band der Wurzelatlas-Reihe). DLG-Verlag,     Frankfurt am Main 1960.
 * Lore Kutschera: Erfolgreiche Landwirtschaft    durch Pflanzensoziologie. DLG-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1961.
 * Lore Kutschera: Ackergesellschaften Kärntens    als Grundlage standortgemäßer Acker- und Grünlandwirtschaft. Bundesversuchsanstalt     für alpenländische Landwirtschaft, Gumpenstein 1966.
 * Lore Kutschera: Wurzelökologie und ihre    Nutzanwendung. Ein Beitrag zur Erforschung der Gesamtpflanze. Internationales     Symposium vom 27. bis 29. September 1982 veranstaltet von der     Bundesanstalt für alpenländische Landwirtschaft Gumpenstein. Herausgegeben     von W. Böhm, L. Kutschera und E. Lichtenegger. Verlag der Bundesanstalt     für alpenländische Landwirtschaft, Irdning 1983.
 * Lore Kutschera, Erwin Lichtenegger, Monika    Sobotik: Wurzelatlas mitteleuropäischer Grünlandpflanzen. Band     1 Monocotyledoneae (= 2. Band der     Wurzelatlas-Reihe). Gustav Fischer Verlag, Stuttgart/New York 1982.
 * Lore Kutschera, Erwin Lichtenegger, Monika    Sobotik: Wurzelatlas mitteleuropäischer Grünlandpflanzen. Band 2.     Pteridophyta und Dicotyledoneae (Magnoliopsida). Teil 1 Morphologie,     Anatomie, Ökologie, Verbreitung, Soziologie, Wirtschaft (= 3.     Band der Wurzelatlas-Reihe). Gustav Fischer Verlag, Stuttgart/Jena/New     York 1992.
 * Lore Kutschera, Monika Sobotik, Erwin    Lichtenegger: Wurzelatlas mitteleuropäischer Grünlandpflanzen.     Band 2 Pteridophyta und Dicotyledoneae (Magnoliopsida). Teil 2 Anatomie (=     4. Band der Wurzelatlas-Reihe). Gustav Fischer Verlag, Stuttgart/Jena/New     York 1992.
 * Lore    Kutschera: Root Ecology and its Practical Application. A     Contribution to the Investigation of the Whole Plant 2. Proceedings of     the 3. ISRR-Symposium of the International Society of Root Research, 2. –     6. September 1991 in Wien (Austria). Edited by L. Kutschera, E. Hübl, E.     Lichtenegger, H. Persson and M. Sobotik. Published by Verein für Wurzelforschung, Klagenfurt 1992.
 * Lore Kutschera, Erwin Lichtenegger, Monika Sobotik,    Dieter Haas: Die Wurzel das neue Organ. Ihre Bedeutung für das     Leben von Weltwitschia mirabilis und anderer Arten der Namib sowie von     Arten angrenzender Gebiete. Mit Erklärung des geotropen Wachstums der     Pflanzen. Eigenverlag Pflanzensoziologisches Institut, Klagenfurt     1997.
 * Lore Kutschera, Monika Sobotik (allgemeiner Teil),    Erwin Lichtenegger unter Mitarbeit von Lore Kutschera, Monika Sobotik und     Dieter Haas (spezieller Teil): Bewurzelung von Pflanzen in     verschiedenen Lebensräumen (= Stapfia. Band 49;     5. Band der Wurzelatlas-Reihe). Herausgegeben vom OÖ. Landesmuseum, Linz     1997.
 * Lore Kutschera, Erwin Lichtenegger: Wurzelatlas    mitteleuropäischer Waldbäume und Sträucher (= 6. Band der     Wurzelatlas-Reihe). Leopold Stocker Verlag, Graz/Stuttgart 2002.
 * Lore Kutschera, Erwin Lichtenegger: Wurzelstation    Lobau. Einladung in den Wurzelraum. Herausgegeben von der     Magistratsabteilung 49 – Forstamt und     Landwirtschaftsbetrieb der Stadt Wien, Wien 2005.
 * Lore Kutschera, Erwin Lichtenegger, Monika    Sobotik: Wurzelatlas der Kulturpflanzen gemäßigter Gebiete mit     Arten des Feldgemüsebaues (= 7. Band der Wurzelatlas-Reihe).     DLG-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2009.

Publications about Kutschera:


 * Franz    Speta: Zur Geschichte der Wurzelforschung mit besonderer     Berücksichtigung der Aktivitäten in Österreich. In: Stapfia. Ausgabe     50, Linz 1997, S. 257–261 (gesamter Artikel S. 7–288, zobodat.at [PDF], darin Kurzbiographien von Lore     Kutschera, S. 257–259, Erwin Lichtenegger, S. 259–260, und Monika Sobotik,     S. 260–261; mit Fotos).
 * Franz Speta, Gerhard Aubrecht: Wurzeln.    Einblicke in verborgene Welten (= Festschrift zum 80. Geburtstag     von Lore Kutschera). Katalog des OÖ. Landesmuseums, Neue Folge 118, Linz     1997.
 * Karin Jürgens, Mathilde Schmitt: Lore    Kutschera. * 14. September 1917 in Villach, Österreich. Wurzelforscherin     und Pflanzensoziologin. In: Pionierinnen des Landbaus (=     angelas-Schriftenreihe. Band 1). Herausgegeben von Heide Inhetveen und     Mathilde Schmitt. C.D.C. Heydorn Verlag Uetersen, 2000, S. 111–115 (mit     Bild).
 * U. Köpke: Nachruf. Frau Univ. Prof. Dr. Lore    Kutschera. In: Nachrichten der Gesellschaft für     Pflanzenbauwissenschaften, Ausgabe November 2008, S. 8.
 * Lore Kutschera †. In: Österreichischer Agrarverlag (Hrsg.): Forstzeitung. Jahrgang    119, Heft 12, Wien 2008, S. 43.
 * Monika Sobotik, Roland K. Eberwein: Univ.-Prof.    DI Dr. Lore Kutschera (14.9.1917 – 16.10.2008). Die Wurzel ist (k)ein     seltsam Ding! Ein Leben für die Wurzelforschung. In: Carinthia     II. Mitteilungen des Naturwissenschaftlichen Vereins für Kärnten. Jahrgang     199 der Gesamtreihe = Jahrgang 119 der Carinthia II. Teil 1, Klagenfurt 2009,     S. 267–275 (zobodat.at [PDF], mit Bild und vollständigem     Verzeichnis ihrer wissenschaftlichen Veröffentlichungen).
 * Lore Kutschera. Ein Leben für die Wurzelforschung. Bearbeitet und herausgegeben von Wolfgang Böhm. Auretim    Verlag, Göttingen 2010 (mit Bild und Schriftenverzeichnis).
 * Franz Speta: Kutschera-Mitter, Eleonore. In:    Brigitta Keintzel, Ilse Korotin (Hrsg.): Wissenschafterinnen     in und aus Österreich. Leben – Werk – Wirken. Böhlau,     Wien/Köln/Weimar 2002, ISBN     3-205-99467-1, S. 432–436.
 * Lisa Rettl: Von halben Sachen und    Wahrheiten. Die Botanikerin Lore Kutschera, der Nationalsozialismus und     der große blinde Fleck. In: Zeitgeschichte, Jg. 48 (2021), Heft     3, S. 335–360. (Kernaussagen: https://science.orf.at/stories/3208809/ )

Weblinks:

www.rootresearch.org. International Society of Root Research.

Root System Drawings - Wageningen University & Research - Image Collections (wur.nl)

This collection stores 1180 drawings, the outcome of 40 years of root system excavations and drawings executed in Europe, predominantly Austria. The drawings, their analysis and description were executed by the Pflanzensoziologisches Institut, Klagenfurt, led by Prof. Dr. Lore Kutschera.