Franz von Mückusch and Buchberg

Franz Carl Anton Cyprian Ritter von Mückusch and Buchberg , also von Mükusch and von Mikusch (born September 26, 1749 in Nieder Rothwasser , Austrian Silesia ; † August 11, 1837 in Troppau , Austrian Silesia) was an Austrian natural scientist, botanist and private scholar. He was a co-founder of the high school museum in Opava. The retired Imperial and Royal captain was known among his contemporaries as the “veteran in the Jeseníky ”.

Live and act

Franz von Mückusch and Buchberg was born on his father's estate in Nieder Rothwasser as the son of the Imperial Council and State Elder of the Principality of Neisse , Urban von Mückusch and Buchberg, and his wife Johanna nee von Falkenhayn . His older brother was the later district chief Ernst von Mückusch and Buchberg (1740-1814).

Franz von Mückusch received his first lesson from the tutor Ilenhauser. From 1760 he attended high school in Opava , and a little later that in Olomouc . After Franz von Mückusch had decided against the will of his parents for a future military career, they first sent him to the Weißwasseraner Piarists to study philosophy and metaphysics there and hoped to change his mind. In 1765 he began studying at the Vienna Engineering Academy and, after graduating in 1768, joined the Imperial and Royal Infantry Regiment Freiherr Sincére as a second lieutenant. From 1772 he was stationed with the rank of first lieutenant for two years in the imperial city of Schwäbisch Hall , until in 1775 the new regimental commander General Field Marshal-Lieutenant von Callenberg called him to Vienna as an adjutant. There Mückusch frequented scholarly circles, was accepted into the Viennese lodge " Zur Wahr Eintracht " in 1783 and ultimately found military service only cold and mechanical. In 1784 he left the military to live with his sister Maria Anna Countess Welczeck and to find his fulfillment as a private scholar in nature and the sciences. He resigned from the Masonic Lodge in 1785. After he had lost all of the fortune he had carried with him in cash on a trip from Vienna to Troppau in 1789, he felt compelled to look for a living in the army again. In the same year Mückusch was accepted as a sergeant in the Szluin border regiment, where he took part in the campaign against the Turks and was promoted to lieutenant. In 1790 General von Callenberg brought him back to his regiment and promoted him to lieutenant. During this time he put on a significant collection of military writings and dealt with astronomy. From 1792 Mückusch again served as the general's adjutant and was promoted to captain in 1793. In 1794 he volunteered for a campaign against the French , on which he sustained an injury by falling from a horse near Valenciennes . In 1795, Mückusch was transferred to the economy commission as a semi-invalid. While he was stationed at the Montour in Marburg an der Drau , Mückusch married a widow who died after a short time. During this time he suffered from sadness and melancholy. In 1801 he was transferred to the Silesian Border Cordon at his own request and retired the following year.

Franz von Mückusch and Buchberg settled in Jägerndorf , lived on a pension of 600 guilders a year and conducted intensive studies of the flora of the Gesenkes. From spring to autumn he was out and about in nature, in winter he arranged his herbarium . During this time he also acquired an extensive library. After he was called up to serve as captain of the reserve in 1805, Mückusch gave his herbarium to his friend Augustin Kaluža in Breslau and a large part of his books to the Jägerndorfer secondary school. Because of his age and ailments, Franz von Mükusch was soon released from reservist service. He then continued his botanical investigations and also made himself expert in mineralogy and geognosy . At the Jägerndorfer Hauptschule he set up a foundation that was supposed to reward the students' love of truth. He was close friends with Faustin Ens and Kajetan Koschatzky. When Ens took over the chair for natural history at the Troppauer Gymnasium in 1812, he decided to buy a collection of minerals and plants as well as a library, since the gymnasium lacked any visual material. He found support for his plans from Franz von Mückusch and the Mayor of Troppau, Johann Josef Schössler. In 1814 they founded the high school museum in Opava, one of the first museums in Austrian Silesia. Mükusch donated his entire library to the museum and bought Christian Karl André's mineral collection together with Ens in Brno . In the same year Franz von Mükusch and Buchberg moved to Troppau after the death of his brother Ernst von Jägerndorf and took over the guardianship of his underage daughters. Since then he has devoted himself entirely to the Troppauer Museum; From his pension, Mückusch bought the museum a large number of books every year on Foundation Day. Because of his commitment to school education, he was appointed vice director of the Troppauer grammar school in 1815. The "veteran in the Gesenke" undertook his botanical hikes until he was 86 years old. He died at the age of 88 and left no descendants. With his death, the knight family of Mückusch and Buchberg died out in the male line.

Franz von Mückusch and Buchberg was a corresponding member of the Moravian-Silesian Society of Agriculture, Natural and Regional Studies and an honorary member of the Prussian-Silesian Society for Patriotic Culture . Mückusch enriched the collections of both societies as well as those of the Brno pastor Hochstetter and the Wroclaw medical assessor Christian Günther with plants from the Jeseníky. In the “Redlichen Verkündiger” and the “Renewed Fatherland Papers for the Austrian Imperial State” , news and letters from the “Veteran in the Gesenke” appeared regularly.

literature

• Faustin Ens: The veteran in the Gesenke (Franz Ritter von Mükusch and Buchberg, kk pens. Captain) , in Moravia. A sheet for entertainment, for the knowledge of the fatherland of social and industrial progress , 2nd year 1839
• Obituary in the communications of the kk Moravian-Silesian Society of Agriculture, Natural and Regional Studies in Brno No. 2, January 1818
• Erich Šefčík : Franz Mückusch z Buchbergu, Johann Josef Schössler a Faustin Ens, zakladatelé opavského gymnazjiního muzea r. 1814 , in Cieszyńskie Studia Muzealne Vol. 1, 2003
• Erich Šefčík: The natural scientist Franz Mückusch von Buchberg (1749-1837) and the beginnings of museums in Opava-Opava , in Adler magazine for genealogy and heraldry . 16. (XXX.) Volume. Vienna 1991–1992

Web links

• Franz Carl Anton Cyprian Freiherr von Mikusch von Buchberg in the Illuminati Wiki of the University of Erfurt