Georg Gasser

Georg Gasser (born April 23, 1857 in Rentsch near Bozen ; † June 2, 1931 in Bozen) was a painter , collector and natural historian .

Life

Early years as a painter

Georg, son of the large landowner and brick manufacturer Alois Gasser, attended the Franciscan high school in Bozen. His teacher Vinzenz Maria Gredler soon recognized his talent for painting.

Encouraged by Gredler, Georg decided against his parents' wishes to become an artist. It was also Gredler who got Gasser enthusiastic about nature. His interest in art and nature, aroused during his school days, was to have a major impact on his future life.

His artistic talent finally convinced his father too, and he succeeded in getting his father to finance an apprenticeship with the painter Johann Hintner , a representative of the late Nazarene school. Gasser himself soon convinced Hintner of his artistic abilities, so that he was entrusted with demanding work. In the summer of 1877 he worked with Hintner and others on the design of the castle church in Wechselburg, Saxony .

In the same year he applied for admission to the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich , but in the fall of 1877 initially had to be content with admission to the arts and crafts school in Munich. Not until a year later was he accepted into the academy, which he attended until 1885 or 1886, depending on the source. One of his teachers in Munich was Wilhelm Leibl , who, like Gredler, was able to inspire him for the beauty of nature.

He then went on a longer study trip through Italy, which was also his honeymoon. On the journey made between 1887 and 1888, which followed in the footsteps of Goethe's Italian journey , he slowly turned from painter to naturalist. From his diary entries it emerges that he had to force himself to paint and instead preferred geological excursions.

Collector and museum curator

After returning to Bolzano, he devoted himself less and less to painting. Instead, he began a passionate collecting activity. He collected masses of minerals , animal preparations of all kinds, butterflies, insects, mussels, snails, corals as well as archaeological and ethnographic pieces.

At the beginning of his collecting activity it was mainly exotic pieces that interested him. His collection included a 150 kg killer clam and a two meter tall Japanese giant crab . In a few years his collection comprised over 25,000 pieces, including 11,000 minerals alone.

In 1892 Gasser opened the region's first natural history museum in his private home on Spitalgasse in Bozen . The museum was housed in three rooms crammed to the ceiling and immediately caught the attention of visitors. His private museum even made it into all Tyrolean travel guides of the time.

In his museum, Gasser attached great importance to the presentation of his exhibits as well as to educational aspects. He acquired the necessary knowledge himself as an autodidact . In the opening year, he forged plans to build a museum on its own property, which, in addition to its collection, would also house the municipal collections. But it was not until 1900 that Mayor Julius Perathoner promised to finance a city museum that would also house the Gasser Collection.

Thanks to his private museum, he assumed a social position and a level of fame that had previously been denied to him as a painter. From 1900 a series of popular science lectures contributed to its recognition, especially from 1906 a lecture series on the miracle of creation. His lectures were generally understandable and aimed at a wide audience. In the aftermath of the Kulturkampf , however, Gasser avoided taking a clear position.

In 1904 he began to move his collection to the city ​​museum in Bozen, which opened its doors a year later. Gasser not only received the largest and most beautiful exhibition rooms, but was also appointed curator of the natural science department. At the same time, he shifted the focus of his collection more and more to mineralogy and over time filled 67 showcases with minerals. He also traded in minerals and, in agreement with the museum management, sold duplicates from the collection. In 1913 he put his accumulated knowledge about the minerals of his home Tyrol in a self-financed book, which not only represents Gasser's main scientific work, but is still one of the most detailed mineral topographies in this area.

After the end of the First World War and the annexation of South Tyrol to Italy , the cultural and museum situation in South Tyrol changed as a result, especially after the fascist takeover of power in 1922. In April 1931, during a meeting of the city museum, Gasser was informed that in the future there would be wanted to forego his collection, although he was still considered a role model among mineral collectors. Badly hit by the news, he suffered a stroke during the meeting, of which he died a little later.

After his death in 1934, the Gasser Collection was moved from the city museum and temporarily stored by his family. About two thirds were destroyed or sold by improper storage. The University of Padua bought around 2500 minerals . In 1972 the rest of the collection was donated to the Autonomous Province of Bolzano - South Tyrol . In 1992, this formed the occasion for the foundation of the South Tyrol Museum of Nature , which was opened in 1997 and in which parts of Gasser's collection, especially his mineral collection and the scientifically particularly important mollusc collection , are exhibited.

Publications

• The minerals of Tyrol including Vorarlberg and the Hohe Tauern. Wagner'sche Universitäts-Buchhandlung, Innsbruck 1913. (online)
• The "Theisserkugel" occurrence in Villnöß near Klausen In: Der Schlern 1922, pp. 197-198. (on-line)

literature

• Gasser Georg. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 1, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1957, p. 406.
• Patrick Gasser, Benno Baumgarten: Ex coll. Georg Gasser (1857–1931). Catalog book for the exhibition in the Naturmuseum Südtirol. Naturmuseum Südtirol, Bolzano 2007 ISBN 978-88-87108-01-9 .
• Patrick Gasser: Georg Gasser - initiator of the South Tyrol Museum of Nature. In: Museumsbund Österreich (Ed.): New museum: the Austrian museum magazine 09/4 & 10/1 April 2010 Subject collector's passion. Museum Association Austria, Linz 2010 ISSN 1015-6720. PDF
• Theresia Pichler: “Pictures of nature”, “living paintings” and the “admiring eye”. The pictorial study of the museum collection and the popular writings of Georg Gasser. University of Vienna, diploma thesis, 2007. PDF

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Theresia Pichler: "Pictures of Nature", "Living Paintings" and the "Admiring Eye". The pictorial study of the museum collection and the popular writings of Georg Gasser. P. 19
2. ^ ^{A b} Theresia Pichler: "Pictures of Nature", "Living Paintings" and the "Admiring Eye". The pictorial study of the museum collection and the popular writings of Georg Gasser. P. 20
3. ^ Georg and Alfred Gasser (1857–1931). In: mineralogicalrecord.com. Retrieved October 18, 2019 . 
4. ↑ Gasser Georg. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 1, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1957, p. 406.
5. ↑ ^{a b} Patrick Gasser: Georg Gasser - initiator of the South Tyrol Museum of Nature. P. 16
6. ↑ Patrick Gasser: Georg Gasser - initiator of the South Tyrol Museum of Nature. Pp. 15-16
7. ↑ Patrick Gasser: Georg Gasser - initiator of the South Tyrol Museum of Nature. P. 15
8. ↑ Theresia Pichler: "Nature Pictures", "Living Paintings" and the "Admiring Eye". The pictorial study of the museum collection and the popular writings of Georg Gasser. P. 108
9. ↑ Theresia Pichler: "Nature Pictures", "Living Paintings" and the "Admiring Eye". The pictorial study of the museum collection and the popular writings of Georg Gasser. Pp. 44-49, 109
10. ↑ Gasser, Georg. In: mineralienatlas.de. Retrieved October 18, 2019 . 
11. ↑ Theresia Pichler: "Nature Pictures", "Living Paintings" and the "Admiring Eye". The pictorial study of the museum collection and the popular writings of Georg Gasser. P. 116
12. ↑ Patrick Gasser: Georg Gasser - initiator of the South Tyrol Museum of Nature. P. 18
13. ^ Project "Gasser". In: naturmuseum.it. Retrieved October 18, 2019 . 
14. ↑ Patrick Gasser: Georg Gasser - initiator of the South Tyrol Museum of Nature. P. 19
15. ↑ Theresia Pichler: "Nature Pictures", "Living Paintings" and the "Admiring Eye". The pictorial study of the museum collection and the popular writings of Georg Gasser. P. 1
16. ↑ Historical collection: Georg Gasser Collection. In: naturmuseum.it. Retrieved October 18, 2019 .