Early Mendel University: From an Agricultural College to a Shared Field Station

After the First World War and the establishment of Czechoslovakia, proposals for an independent agricultural college in Moravia entered the legislative process. Assembly member Kuneš Sonntag promoted the proposal; agricultural educator Edvard Reich worked on preparation and accommodation; and František Chmelař helped develop the bill. Parliament, ministries and educators together brought the institution into being.

Act No. 460, dated 24 July 1919, established an independent state agricultural college in Brno with agricultural and forestry divisions, four-year courses and Czech-language instruction. It took effect upon publication on 7 August. The institution adopted Mendel’s name later.

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The agricultural division grew from the regional agricultural academy transferred from Tábor to Brno. The new college used a building originally intended for an institution for blind people in Černá Pole. Its preparatory body selected twelve professors; plant taxonomist and pathologist František Bubák became the first rector. Students registered in October 1919 using premises at Brno’s Czech technical college. Lectures began on 18 November with 186 students.

The statutory organization took time to develop. In the first academic year, Brno offered only the first two years of the agricultural division, while arrangements for forestry still involved the technical college in Prague. Forestry teaching in Brno began formally in 1920/1921, when both divisions offered all four years. Buildings, laboratories, specimens and books were gathered as courses expanded.

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The founding act authorized the Ministry of Education and National Enlightenment to prepare the institution in consultation with the agriculture and finance ministries. It required demonstration farms, teaching forests, experimental fields and suitable buildings, setting the end of 1930 as the deadline for constructing those facilities and accommodation.

Postwar state finances were unstable, and budget cuts soon threatened the new institution. Shortages of housing for professors led some teachers to leave Brno. While seeking land and funds, the college expanded courses through its existing staff. In 1921–1922, the professors’ assembly and ministries repeatedly discussed Reich’s agricultural-education teaching position, course remit and remuneration. From 1923/1924, he taught the recommended course to fourth-year students in the summer semester for two hours each week.

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Zoology professor Emil Bayer proposed a biological station at Lednice, creating a practical site for inter-institutional cooperation. The education ministry approved it in March 1922; about three months later researchers obtained the use of a small Liechtenstein hunting lodge beside the fishponds. Participants included the agricultural college, the veterinary college and Masaryk University, whose natural-science and medical staff could also use the base.

Representatives from the institutions formed a governing body under Bayer’s leadership. Research extended beyond fish farming to birds, insects and other natural observations. Students could learn in the field, while researchers could return repeatedly for continuous observations. Shared facilities gave the institutions a common base for this work.

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Using its own boats, the station sampled ponds to study plankton and water chemistry. Observations extended to river branches, marshes, pools and artificial channels, together with records of birds, insects, plants and weather. Researchers hoped to improve fish farming by studying waters and their organisms as interconnected systems. Agricultural production and basic natural research thus met at the same site.

Researchers rented three upstairs rooms for four hundred crowns annually. The landowner required that research not disrupt fish farming, and sampling needed the estate administration’s consent. Equipment and operations depended on additional public support; academic exchanges supplied publications. Cooperation involved university staff, funding bodies and land managers, with scientific plans coordinated around rules governing access to the site.

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Experimental opportunities continued to grow through the 1920s. The college received the Adamov teaching forest in 1922/1923 and the Žabčice farm in 1924/1925. Livestock, implements and building conditions nevertheless imposed financial burdens. A later agricultural weather station brought climate observation into teaching, developing demonstration sites into facilities that could accumulate research records.

Consolidating the new college involved combining resources: professors taught courses, libraries and specimen collections supported training, farms and forests enabled long-term experiments, and the shared biological station linked other institutions. Its agricultural and forestry research capacity grew through these organizational efforts.

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