Dr. Karin Winkler

The special nature of Witzenhausen also became apparent to me in the diversity of my fellow students: from the farm successor from Schleswig-Holstein to the apple farmer from South Tyrol to the emigrant who wants to start sheep farming in the Spanish Pyrenees - many individual life paths led there to the small and yet so important place on the Werra.

In Witzenhausen, important foundations were laid for my further career. Among my documents from that time, for example, are overheadsheets for a presentation entitled "The use of beneficial insects in organic farming". In the tropical greenhouse I got the chance to participate in the development of a concept for biological plant protection. The professorship on plant protection was not occupied at the time, so I went to Göttingen for a while with my fellow student Albrecht Benzing to take a course on the basics of entomology at the university.

Technically, a lot has developed since my time in Witzenhausen. My first experience with the advantages of e-mail traffic was at the end of my bachelor studies. When I asked Wageningen University if I could start the master's program in Plant Sciences with specialization in IPM in the coming fall, despite having missed the enrollment deadline, I received an answer just four hours later! By traditional mail, I would have had to wait at least four days for a response.

While I was studying all facets of plant protection in Wageningen and specializing in entomology, the professorship for ecological plant protection was being filled in Witzenhausen. As a student member of the appointment committee, I was very pleased that the choice fell on Maria Finckh. My plan to return to Witzenhausen for a doctoral thesis was not realized because I was offered the opportunity to do my doctorate as a scholarship holder in Wageningen through the Robert Bosch Foundation.

The fact that I had just become pregnant when the project was accepted was no cause for concern for my PhD supervisor: he had also taken his young son out to the field trials in a backpack during his doctoral work. Thanks to the flexibility of the foundation, good infant care in the Netherlands, a great father who took care of our son full time during the first months, and a network of good friends, working on the PhD could actually be combined with the busy life of a mother.

After two more years in research, there was no more funding for the time being. As luck would have it, a translation agency urgently needed a German-speaking colleague. So I used my linguistic skills professionally for a few years. The content was mainly less interesting, but for a change it was a bit more relaxed and flexible than the research work.

The step back to the university succeeded when a former colleague of the fruit growing institute called me with the question if I could imagine to work as an entomologist in applied research again. Now I have been working at the Pomology Institute of Wageningen University since 2015. The focus of the work is on biological plant protection, but from time to time there are cross connections to other areas that make me think back to the time in Witzenhausen. For example, in a soil improvement trial, we are using organic fertilizer that comes from deep-fed cattle pens. This brings back memories of the early mornings we spent in the deep-flow barns of some dairy farms as part of a research project to assess the cleanliness of the cow udders there...one of the many experiences from Witzenhausen that I would not want to miss!

Götz Papke: That's a nice report! Even though there are a few zigzags in it, you seem to be doing well and you are still in agricultural science.  In the meantime, I am a so-called senior auditor for two standard setters, VLOG and KAT for Europe. Every now and then I drive through Holland and always think,  Manometer it is densely populated here and the Dutch are really quite crazy about it in the field of agricultural science.