Franz von Hruschka

Franz von Hruschka

Franz von Hruschka (born March 13, 1819 in Vienna ; † May 8, 1888 in Venice ) was an Austrian professional soldier and, as a beekeeper, the inventor of the honey extractor . With full title he called himself Major Franz Edler von Hruschka.

Life

The von Hruschka family comes from Austrian Silesia . The father Franz Ludwig Augustin von Hruschka was born on August 25, 1787 in Brosdorf near Wagstadt . After studying philosophy in Prague, he volunteered for active military service in the imperial army on July 7, 1804, where he was raised to the hereditary nobility for his military service after 1848. He left the army as a lieutenant colonel . His wife was Anna Simon, whom he married in Vienna in 1818.

Major Franz Edler von Hruschka was born on March 13, 1819 in Vienna . However, he spent his childhood in Budweis . In 1827 he moved to Graz with his father . There he attended the normal school and three classes of the Latin school. At the age of fourteen he was drafted and as a cadet of the 19th Infantry Regiment Hessen-Homburg he was assigned to the cadet company in Graz. He also learned Czech in the cadet school. After three years he graduated from the cadet school in 1836 and joined his regiment, whose garrison was in Vienna at the time. After a few days, however, he was transferred to the Hungarian Bakonyi Regiment No. 33, whose garrison was in Milan. Von Hruschka later fondly remembered his stay in Milan, which "had a whole decade of pleasant memories in it, in which he dreamed the dreams of his youth and earned his first spurs". In 1840 he was made an ensign and in 1844 a lieutenant . The regimental headquarters were meanwhile transferred to Zadar, but von Hruschka, it appears, continued to serve in Italy. In the turbulent year of 1848, he joined the Navy and was promoted to boat ensign at the same time.

Hruschkas' qualification certificate was preserved from this time. It says that von Hruschka has a shrewd head with a pronounced talent; He devoted his spare time and his modest means to the construction of a device with which it would be possible to draw quickly and accurately from nature and which would be suitable for painting landscapes as well as people. In 1844 his creative spirit invented a boat that could be both sailed and rowed. In the rank of boat ensign, he received the military cross of merit with war decoration as commander of the rowing fleet for a successful operation near Caorle during the blockade of Venice . In the same year he took part in the siege of Ancona as an artillery officer of the war frigates Gueriera and Juno . In 1849 he was appointed lieutenant frigate. Soon afterwards, in 1850, he married Antonie Albrecht. In 1852 he was made a naval lieutenant. In 1857 he was promoted to major and at the same time appointed local commander in Legnago , a small town on the lower reaches of the Adige River in the province of Verona . With this appointment, Hruschkas' military career also ended. On August 1, 1865, he was sent into permanent retirement.

As a new domicile, he chose the town of Dolo in the province of Venice , where he owned a small estate that his wife brought into the marriage as a dowry. Even as the local commander of Legnago, he seems to have dealt intensively with beekeeping, because in the year of his retirement in 1865, he went public with his latest invention. In an article that was printed in the Eichstädter Bienenzeitung on July 1, 1865, he described his method of using centrifugal force to fling honey out of the honeycomb frames. At the same time he came into contact with the S. Bollinger company in Vienna to construct a honey extractor. On the “14. Wanderer's Assembly of German and Austrian Beekeepers ”, which took place in Brno from September 12th to 14th, 1865 , was Franz Hruschka as“ Noble von, kk Platzmajor from Legnago in Venetia ”by the chairman, the abbot of the Augustinian monastery Cyrill Napp , as Abbot's predecessor by Gregor Mendel , asked to demonstrate his invention to the assembled beekeepers in practice. He explained to the enthusiastic participants of the meeting that he had found Columbus's egg for honey extraction by centrifugal force and hurled a honeycomb, which he placed in a square funnel, on a string above his head. This invention boosted beekeeping tremendously. Now, for the first time, it was possible to get a very pure, aromatic honey without disturbing the honeycomb, which could therefore be used for years. Within a few years and with increasingly improved equipment, the honey extractor became the standard in beekeeping.

Franz Edler von Hruschka devoted himself to research on bee colonies for many years and brought beekeeping in Italy to a new bloom with numerous lectures. However, while attempting to open a hotel in Venice, he lost all his possessions and died impoverished and withdrawn on May 8, 1888.

Recognitions

• 1872 silver state medal at the hiking meeting of German and Austrian beekeepers in Salzburg
• Gold medal at the second Italian beekeeping meeting in Florence
• 1936 memorial plaque on the town hall of Dolo

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jaroslav Rytíř : Major Franz von Hruschka . Edited by the regional headquarters of the beekeeping associations in Prague in 1938. Excerpts published by the Association of Magazine-Beekeepers-Czech Republic (PSNV-CZ) 2015