Anton Lux (Africa explorer)

Anton Lux

Anton Erwin Lux (born December 23, 1847 in Venice , † May 31, 1908 in Stockerau ) was an Austrian artillery officer and traveler to Africa .

Life

Anton Lux attended the artillery academy as the son of an officer and, after graduating, also started an officer career. With a talent for drawing and an interest in geography , Lux developed plans for fortifications and was transferred to the General Staff soon after 1872 . The Vienna World Exhibition in 1873 profited significantly from his plans and map drawings, so that he was awarded the gold medal "Viribus unitis" for his services in 1874 on the occasion of an audience with Emperor Franz Joseph I.

On this occasion, Lux also received the approval to take part in the second Africa expedition of the German Africa Society under the direction of Paul Pogge as a geographer .

The Loango expedition, in which the ornithologist Alexander von Homeyer took part in addition to Paul Pogge , traveled south of the Congo through the land of the Bangela to Kimbundo , which had not yet reached a German group.

After his return, Lux took part in an Africa conference in Brussels as an Austrian delegate and published his book Von Loanda nach Kimbundo in 1879/80 . Over the next few years he traveled to the Balkans , and his travelogue appeared in 1887.

From 1889 Lux returned to military service and studied oriental languages in Vienna at the same time . In 1903 he went into military retirement and died in Stockerau in 1908. He is buried at the cemetery in Mödling, where his wife was already buried.

Fonts

• From Loanda to Kimbundo etc. 1875-76 (Vienna 1879).
• The Balkan Peninsula (excluding Greece). Physical and ethnographic descriptions and city pictures (Freiburg 1887)

literature

• Rainer Egger :  Lux Anton. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 5, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1972, p. 381.