Karl Ereky
Encyclopedia
Karl Ereky born as Wittmann Károly and also known as Ereky Károly was an Hungarian Agricultural engineer.

Early life

Ereky was born on October 18, 1878 in Esztergom
Esztergom
Esztergom , is a city in northern Hungary, 46 km north-west of the capital Budapest. It lies in Komárom-Esztergom county, on the right bank of the river Danube, which forms the border with Slovakia there....

, Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...

 as Wittmann Károly. In 1893 he changed his name to Ereky. He had three brothers Ereky Jenő, Ereky Ferenc and Ereky István. Ereky finished grammar school at Sümeg and Székesfehérvár. He attended the Technical University of Budapest and in 1900 received a degree in technical engineering.

Career

He then worked as machine designer for several paper and food industry companies in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

 until 1905. He moved to Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...

 and became an assistant professor in József
Technical University. In 1919 he became the Hungarian Minister of Nutrition. He wrote over one hundred publications which were written in Hungarian and published in German. Ereky was also proficient in speaking both German and English.

In 1922 he wrote a book on the mechanisms chlorophyll and how it can be used for animal feeding.
In 1925 he wrote a book on leaf proteins as a possible food source which he also promoted as a commercial product.

Biotechnologie

Ereky coined the word "biotechnology" in Hungary during 1917 in a book he published in Berlin called Biotechnologie der Fleisch-, Fett- und Milcherzeugung im landwirtschaftlichen Grossbetriebe (Biotechnology of Meat, Fat and Milk Production in an Agricultural Large-Scale Farm) where he described a technology based on converting raw materials into a more useful product. He built a slaughterhouse for a thousand pigs and also a fattening farm with space for 50,000 pigs, raising over 100,000 pigs a year. The enterprise was enormous, becoming one of the largest and most profitable meat and fat operations in the world. Ereky further developed a theme that would be reiterated through the 20th century: biotechnology could provide solutions to societal crises, such as food and energy shortages. For Ereky, the term "biotechnologie" indicated the process by which raw materials could be biologically upgraded into socially useful products.

The book sold several thousand copies within few weeks in Germany. In 1921 the book was translated into Dutch.

After WWII and Death

On September 19, 1946, Ereky was sent to the prison of Vác
Vác
Vác is a town in Pest county in Hungary with approximately 35,000 inhabitants. The archaic spellings of the name are Vacz and Vacs.-Location:...

for 12 years by People’s Tribunal for his counter-revolutionary role in Hungary. He died in prison on June 17, 1952 at the age of 74.
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