By Carolin Tassius-Diederich / Holsteiner Verband Photography: Holsteiner Verband

At the end of the year 2020, Dr. Thomas Nissen will retire after 32 years as the breeding manager of the Holsteiner horse and the Verband’s director. At Neumünster he had a ceremonial farewell during the 50th Holsteiner licensing and elite auction.

Dr. Thomas Nissen grew up on a farm in Schleswig-Holstein. After leaving school he started an apprenticeship in agriculture before studying agricultural science at the Christian Albrecht University at Kiel. In 1986, he did his doctorate on ‘mare performance testing and fertility of the Holsteiner horse’ with Prof. Dr. Ernst Kalm at the Institute for Animal Breeding and Husbandry. For the next two years he worked at the Ministry of Agriculture in Kiel. In 1988, following his final university examination, he became the breeding manager of the Holsteiner Verband, taking over from Gerhard Gramann.
Dr. Nissen had been always a promoter of the targeted use of outside stallions, especially English Thoroughbreds and French sires which had great influence on refining and modernization in the Holsteiner horse. He played a large part in reforming the process of selecting stallions. The change of authority at the licensing from the state to the Verband and several structural modifications of the procedure at stallion performance tests were part of his work. Thomas Nissen set new standards in the breeding business by newly establishing the Verband’s licensing commission, developing new ways for the system of mare registration and introducing the mare performance test. s2If !is_user_logged_in()].. To read the complete article you need to be a subscriber

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