Faces of growth

Despite this positive development, the company plunged into a crisis that threatened its existence when, within a few years, first Julius Giesecke and four years later Matthias Rabbethge died in 1885. High investments and sharply falling sugar prices led to liquidity problems. Eventually, the death of the younger Rabbethge resulted in a crash as creditors and banks had lost confidence.

This also included the construction of a light railroad. From 1906, its locomotives and wagons transported sugar beet and seed from the surrounding estates to Klein Wanzleben via the 70-km-long rail network. But it was not only in this area that he set the course for further development: in 1900, the company founded its first branch abroad in the Ukraine, with others soon to follow. He demonstrated a good instinct with his sense of the importance of science in breeding when he brought Wilhelm Raatz into the company as seed breeding manager and two other experts. They made Kleinwanzleben sugarbeet breeding the world market leader at the turn of the century.

His many-sided commitment received great recognition when Kaiser Wilhelm II appointed Giesecke one of the eleven founding senators of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in 1911. At that time, the predecessor institution of today's Max Planck Society brought together the country's scientific elite.

Together with his cousins Erich and Oscar Rabbethge, who now shared responsibility on the Board of Management, the trio pushed ahead with the expansion of the portfolio to include the cultivation of potatoes, cereals and fodder beets in the 1920s. For the approximately 2,000 employees, the company invested in new housing estates, civil servants' houses, a bathhouse with a medical station and a play school during this period.

When Ernst Giesecke died in 1930, he had already made far-sighted arrangements for his succession. He was succeeded on the board by his son-in-law Karl Büchting, whom he had already brought into the company in 1918.

KWS has employed seasonal migrant workers for field work in Klein Wanzleben since the beginning of the 20th century. Most came from Poland and Russia. They received wages, room and board. The Nazi state disenfranchised these voluntary helpers, who became increasingly indispensable in agriculture during the course of the war, and turned them into barracked forced laborers. This also included prisoners of war. In official German, these workers were called "Ostarbeiter" (Eastern workers). The state withheld their "wages" through various compulsory taxes.

The living conditions of the forced laborers who worked at KWS can hardly be reconstructed today due to a lack of eyewitnesses and sparse sources. Aware that there were certainly painful human fates in Klein Wanzleben as well, the company joined the Foundation "Remembrance, Responsibility and the Future" in 2000, whose aim is to compensate victims of National Socialist coercive measures.

Büchting was committed to dialog and transparency in the use of rapidly developing biotechnological breeding methods. The Board of Trustees for Plant Breeding, which he initiated and which was also made up of critics of green genetic engineering and discussed and evaluated biotechnological breeding approaches at KWS until 2015, is unparalleled in the industry.

The 1980s and 1990s were characterized by growth with a sense of proportion. Research-based and future-oriented, Büchting set the tone for the continuous expansion of its international activities. One focus was the systematic expansion of corn and hybrid rye breeding. During his time, women increasingly took on management positions at KWS.

Andreas J. Büchting had no fear of contact with Germany's neighboring state. In the 1980s, he visited the GDR's Institute for Sugarbeet Breeding in Klein Wanzleben with a KWS delegation. Loose business relations developed. Although it would not be absolutely necessary from a business point of view, after the fall of the Berlin Wall Büchting advocated that KWS return to its founding location and invest in an efficient breeding station here.

“AB” was particularly concerned about the independence of our family-owned stock corporation. For over 25 years, he resolutely and consistently defended the company against several takeover attempts from the sugar industry and agrochemicals. In 1994, he won over the entrepreneur Arend Oetker as a reliable partner. Since then, the Büchting/Oetker majority share pool has ensured KWS' independence - now represented in the next generation by Marie Schnell, a daughter of Arend Oetker, and Felix Büchting.