Friedrich von Dürler

Friedrich von Dürler

Friedrich von Dürler (born April 16, 1804 in Zurich ; † March 8, 1840 by crashing on the Uetliberg ) was a Swiss naturalist and mountaineer who made the first tourist ascent of Tödi in 1837 .

Life

Friedrich von Dürler was the son of the Lucerne merchant Xaver von Dürler and the Zurich woman Barbara Gossweiler. After the early death of his father, he trained as a businessman, but soon gave up the job to devote himself to archeology and gymnastics . He was close friends with Ferdinand Keller , the founder of the Antiquarian Society of Zurich , and, as the association's treasurer, took part in excavations on the Lindenhof in Zurich and the Uetliburg . Together with the theologian Alexander Schweizer , Dürler was one of the early promoters of gymnastics based on the ideas of the German gymnastics father Friedrich Ludwig Jahn . From 1836 the bachelor was secretary of the Zurich poor relief. In September 1838 Dürler became a member of the Swiss Society for Natural Sciences .

On August 19, 1837, he had the chamois hunters and mountain farmers Bernhard and Gabriel Vögeli and Thomas Thut from Linthal take him up to the Glarner Tödi to prove their first ascent of the summit from the north on August 11, 1837. Dürler is still honored today with a plaque in Linthal.

On March 8, 1840, Dürler and friends climbed the Uetliberg, where the first restaurant had just opened. On the basis of a bet, he slipped down a steep gully on his alpine stick, fell over a rock and died. The friends erected a memorial stone with a plaque on the ridge east of today's Uto Staffel restaurant, the so-called Dürlerstein .

The Dürlerstein on the Uetliberg near Zurich

Inscription:

Here
Friedrich von Dürler fell down and died on
March 8th MDCCCXL
Mourning friends
set this stone for him

literature

• Ferdinand Keller: The panorama of Zurich. Description of the mountains visible in Zurich's surroundings, together with a description of the ascent of the Tödiberges, which was carried out in 1837. Orell Füssli , Zurich 1840.
• Emil Zopfi : Tödi, longing and dream. AS Verlag , Zurich 2000, ISBN 3-905111-49-7 .
• Emil Zopfi: Shot and Ice. Historical novel. Limmat Verlag , Zurich 2005, ISBN 3-85791-487-4 .