Emanuel von Friedrichsthal

Emanuel von Friedrichsthal (born January 12, 1809 Urschitz near Brno , † March 13, 1842 in Vienna ) was a k. k. Austrian travel writer and pioneer of the photo expedition in Central America . Its official botanical author abbreviation is “ Friedr. ".

Emanuel von Friedrichsthal attended the Theresian Military Academy and worked in the civil service for a few years until 1834. In the years 1834 to 1837 he toured Greece and Turkey and brought with him extensive scientific collections, some of which went into the Imperial Natural History Cabinet . An expedition to Serbia and Macedonia followed. In 1839 and 1840/41 he traveled to Central America with Metternich's support, on the second expedition, one year after the daguerreotype process became known , about which John William Draper taught him in New York , he made the first photographic recordings in the Maya region of Yucatán , of houses, found objects and the Mayan ruins. He visited Izamal , Uxmal and Chichén Itzá, which was difficult to access at the time . Twenty-five of these now-lost recordings have been shown in New York, the British Museum in London and Paris. Two other daguerreotypes that can be ascribed to him came into the possession of the explorer Karl Bartholomäus Heller a few years after his death in Yucatan ; they have been in the Heller estate of the Austrian National Library since 1970. Friedrichsthal contracted a tropical disease on the research trip, from which he died on his return.

Fonts

• Journey in the southern parts of New Greece Willhelm Engelmann, Leipzig 1838, online .
• Serbia's modern times in historical, political, topographical, statistical and natural history terms . Leipzig, Vienna 1840, online . - Under the pseudonym Emanuel Thal

• Les Monuments de L'Yucatán . In: Nouvelles Annales des Voyages et des Sciences Géographiques . Volume 92, Paris 1841, pp. 291-314, online .
• Sobre los que construyeron los edificios yucatecos y sus antigüedades. Carta a Justo Sierre . In: El Museo Yucateco . Volume 1, Campeche 1941, pp. 178-182,
• Notes on the Lake of Nicaragua and the Province of Chontales, in Guatemala . In: The Journal of the Royal Geographic Society of London Volume 11, 1941 pp. 97-100, online .

literature

• Friedrichsthal Emanuel from. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 1, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1957, p. 366.
• Heinrich Wilhelm Reichardt :  Friedrichsthal, Emanuel Ritter von . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 8, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1878, p. 68.
• Peter E. Palmquist and Thomas R. Kailbourn: Pioneer Photographers of the West . Stanford University Press, Stanford (2000), 252.
• Ulla Fischer-Westhauser: Emanuel von Friedrichsthal. The First Daguerreotypist in Yucatán. In: Photoresearcher , number 10, 2007, pp. 9–16, PDF Online .
• Ulla Fischer-Westhauser: Emanuel von Friedrichsthal - the first daguerre typist in Yucatan. In: Ingrid Kästner et al. (Ed.): Exploring, collecting, noting and communicating - science in the luggage of traders, diplomats and missionaries. Shaker Verlag, Aachen 2014, ISBN 978-3-8440-2725-9 , pp. 321-340.

Web links

• Author entry and list of the plant names described for Emanuel von Friedrichsthal at the IPNI