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Abstract

The cultural history of alcoholic fermentation goes back to very early periods of human being. But only in the 19th century the nature of the biological production of alcohol was discovered. In that time chemistry and botany had a different, complementary view to alcoholic fermentation. While the positions of chemists are well-known and much discussed in the historiography of science the contribution of botanists to fermentation research is almost entirely forgotten nowadays. The work of the mycologist Oscar Brefeld, who studied yeast fermentation from 1873 to 1876, illustrates the special botanical view to the ontogenetical side of alcoholic fermentation, to morphlogical and physiological differences between growing and dying, fermenting and fermented yeast cells, and to the energetic and ecological role of fermentation as well as its universality in vegetable kingdom.