Professor Dr. Hans Hartwig Ruthenberg
19.03.1928 - 13.07.1980

Born and grown up in Danzig, he was assigned in 1944 for an anti-aircraft gun and became a Russian prisoner of war in 1945. In the late autumn 1945 he was dismissed seriously ill and was able to move to West Germany. Between 1946 and 1949, he worked as a farmer worker in the state of Schleswig-Holstein and finished school examination. Then he studied agricultural science in Goettingen from 1949 till 1954. He was a student by Prof. Woermann (agricultural micro economics). He finished with a Ph.D.-thesis. For his post graduate studies he went to the USA followed by a research term in Southeast Asia. During his assistant assignment at the Institute for Tropical Farming of the TU Berlin he visited several countries of Eastern Africa. In 1965 he carried out his habilitation at the University of Goettingen.
In 1966 he was assigned at the chair of Economics of Agricultural production in the Tropics and Subtropics at Agricultural University of Hohenheim. He became the successor of Prof. emeritus Josef G. Knoll (1899-1976).
In the following period he was frequently abroad: in 1974 Visiting Professor at the Economic Development Institute of the World Bank; in 1976 adviser of the Government of Kenya. His research areas and also part of his teaching activities were: farming systems of the tropics and subtropics, agricultural development policies and the economy of irrigation. A pioneer work was his project analysis.
He published the following books: "African Agricultural Production Development Policy in Kenya" (1966), "Smallholder Farming and Smallholder Development in Tanzania" (1968), "Farming system in the tropics" (1971). From 1965 till 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 who had the assignment to develop concepts for the international agricultural research in the 80s.
At the age of 52, Prof. Ruthenberg died during his work and left his wife and four children.
In 1982, the Justus-Liebig-University of Giessen has posthumly dedicated for the first time its development country price to Prof. Ruthenberg for his outstanding work in the field of agricultural farming systems in tropical and subtropical countries and for the application of the knowledge for practical development policies.
© Eiselen Foundation Ulm, 2004