Blasius Kozenn

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Blasius Kozenn

Blasius Kozenn (Slovene: Blaž Kocen ; born January 24, 1821 in Hotunje, Lower Styria , † May 29, 1871 in Hernals near Vienna ) was a pioneering old Austrian cartographer with a Slovene mother tongue.

With the name Kozenn, generations of former students in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy , the First and to this day also the Second Republic, associate the memory of their geography - school atlas . The Kozenn Atlas appears edited by Kozenns death of the leading Schulgeografen Austria, still for more than 150 years in two dozen languages in the millions.

Life

Blasius Kozenn was born in the small village of Hotunje (Schlindorf) near Ponikva (Ponigl) near Cilli in what was then Lower Styria (today: Štajerska in Slovenia ) as the son of small Slovenian farmers. There is now a small museum set up by the Slovenian Geographers' Association. After Kozenn's visit to the elementary school in Ponikva, his teacher there managed to get the talented boy accepted into the grammar school in Cilli / Celje. In Graz he completed his high school years and then studied in Klagenfurt , Duchy of Carinthia , theology . In 1845 he was ordained a priest.

From 1850 to 1852 he had a position as a supplement (assistant teacher) at the grammar school in Cilli. From there he went to Vienna , where he studied mathematics , physics and natural history at the university and passed the teaching examination in these subjects with distinction. In 1854 he was accepted into the civil service and taught at grammar schools, first in Laibach / Ljubljana , then the capital of the Duchy of Carniola , and from 1855 to 1858 in Görz / Gorizia on the Austrian coast . Here he wrote the basics of geography for the 1st class of middle and middle schools (first published in Pest and Vienna in 1858 ; middle schools are to be understood as grammar schools and similar educational establishments, middle schools were the other schools for 10 to 14 year olds) and the study The Climate of Gorizia . In 1858 he came to the kk Staats-Obergymnasium in Olmütz / Olomouc in Moravia , which is run in German , where he stayed until his early retirement in 1870. He also contributed to the introduction of the Realschule , a new form of middle school, and was appointed school council in 1863.

As a result of his poor health, he moved from Olomouc to what was then the Vienna suburb of Hernals , where he died of typhus on May 29, 1871 at the age of 50 .

Kozenn Atlas

In Olomouc Kozenn got to know the bookseller and publisher Eduard Hölzel , who was able to win him over to the plan to design an Austrian school atlas that had not yet existed , which was finally published in 1861 after Hölzel had moved to Vienna. Kozenn was more of a practitioner than a scientist and pioneered the extensive tasks involved in redesigning an atlas, most of which he had to solve himself.

As he wrote in 1861, he had mainly used the maps of the then large German hand atlases von Stieler and Kiepert as sources for his map designs. However, he also did not shy away from copying those from German school atlases of the time directly and only modifying them slightly. In addition, Kozenn also gave his publisher Ed. Hölzel published textbooks for geography in Vienna.

As early as 1900, the complete revisions by Vinzenz von Haardt , Friedrich Umlauft, Wilhelm Schmidt and Franz Heiderich (41st edition 1906) , which are still called Kozenn atlases, were able to compete with the best foreign products in terms of content, cartography and technology. The successes of the Hölzel publishing house at that time encouraged other publishers in the monarchy to publish modern school atlases. In the commercial competition they developed better and better atlas editions in which thematic maps appeared more and more. Later editors, who also shaped the development of school cartography , were Heinrich Güttenberger and Hermann Leiter (53rd edition 1932), Hans Slanar senior (editor since 1939 - revised 75th edition 1951) and Walter Strzygowski (from 1956 - "100- Year edition “86th edition 1961), Hans Slanar jun. (1978), Wigand Ritter (1995) and Lukas Birsak (1986 and 2006).

Kozenn was self-taught. In the text "Geographische Lehrmittel" (In: Annual report on the kk Gymnasium zu Olmütz 1861, pp. 1-20) he described his atlas concept. Since he was not a member of the Geographical Society in Vienna , there is neither an obituary nor an appreciation of his mapping work in their communications. He was a hardworking worker who also created numerous school wall maps .

literature

  • Constantin von Wurzbach : Kozenn, Blasius . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 13th part. Imperial-Royal Court and State Printing Office, Vienna 1865, p. 93 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Hans Slanar: The methodology of the "Austrian Middle School Atlas" . In: Communications of the Austrian Geographical Society. Volume 94, 1952, H. 9-12, pp. 320-324.
  • Austrian Middle School Atlas (Kozenn Atlas). 86th edition. Hundred Year Edition, Ed. Hölzel, Vienna 1961.
  • E. Bernleithner:  Kozenn Blasius. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 4, Publishing House of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1969, p. 178 f. (Direct links on p. 178 , p. 179 ). or on the ÖBL website
  • Lukas Birsak: The Austrian school atlases published by Ed. Hölzel. In: Ferdinand Mayer (Hrsg.): Wiener Schriften zur Geographie und Kartographie. Volume 5, Vienna 1992, pp. 234-241.
  • Wolfgang Sitte: In memory of Blasius Kozenn (1821–1871). In: GW lessons. (Austrian didactic journal for geography and economics) H. 62, 1996, pp. 102-104.
  • Ingrid Kretschmer , Lukas Birsak: The Kozenn Atlas - an Austrian school atlas writes cartography history . In: Communications of the Austrian Geographical Society . Vol. 149, 2007, pp. 253-284.
  • Great Kozenn Atlas. (with Atlas CD) 150-year edition. Ed. Hölzel, Vienna 2011. (With cover picture by the painter Adolf Hölzel ).

Web links

Commons : Blaž Kocen  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. Company history ( Memento of the original from February 1, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.hoelzel.at
  2. ↑ 1861 1st edition of the Geographical School Atlas by B. Kozenn - online in Austria-Lexikon.at
  3. ^ Bibliography on the development of school books from geography in Austria. In: Communications of the Austrian Geographical Society. 129th year 1987, pp. 141-146.
  4. ↑ Ferdinand Mayer (Ed.): School cartography. Vienna Symposium 1990, proceedings. (= Viennese writings on cartography and geography. Volume 5). University of Vienna, 1992, ISBN 3-900830-05-3 .
personal data
SURNAME Kozenn, Blasius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian cartographer
DATE OF BIRTH January 24, 1821
PLACE OF BIRTH Hotunje, Lower Styria
DATE OF DEATH May 29, 1871
Place of death Hernals near Vienna