John Sholto Douglass, 15th Laird of Tilquhillie
John Sholto Douglass , 15th Laird of Tilquhillie (born November 18, 1838 in Thuringia ( Vorarlberg ), † September 14, 1874 near Dalaas ) was an Austrian manufacturer and naturalist.
The versatile personality only lived to be 36 years old and was destined to be a factory owner. Posterity knows him because of his preferences and knowledge of mountaineering, hunting, natural sciences and his interest in researching the Roman history of Vorarlberg.
family
He was the son and heir of the Vorarlberg industrialist John Douglass, 14th Laird of Tilquhillie , who came from the Scottish noble family Douglas , and his wife Jane Margret Kennedy, daughter of the wealthy factory owner James Kennedy.
He married Wanda von Poellnitz, the daughter of Ernst von Poellnitz , whose family came from Würzburg and who lived at Babenwohl Castle in Bregenz. They had four children including:
- John William Edward James Douglass, 16th Laird of Tilquhillie (* 1865), entrepreneur, ⚭ Olga Edith von Reuter;
- Robert Ernest Douglass (* † 1867);
- George Norman Douglass (1868–1952), writer.
After his death, his widow married Jakob Jehly (1854–1897), a painter from Bludenz, with whom she had a daughter:
- Grete Jehly (1882–1934), writer and local poet, ⚭ 1906 Olaf Gulbransson (1873–1958), Norwegian caricaturist.
Life
John Sholto Douglass was born in 1838 in his parents' Villa Falkenhorst in the municipality of Thuringia near Feldkirch in the Walgau valley (Vorarlberg). The Douglass family owned a cotton spinning and weaving mill in Thuringia.
John Sholto Douglass was a great alpinist. His attempt to found the Vorarlberg section of the Austrian Alpine Club failed because of its resistance to accept any sections at all. The Vorarlbergers then joined the German Alpine Association that had just been created in 1869 . During this phase in 1870 he and other Bludenz mountaineers suggested the construction of an accommodation hut on Lake Lünersee . It was built as the first alpine club hut in Vorarlberg and named Douglasshütte . The efforts of Douglass and like-minded people to merge the two main clubs, the German Alpine Club and the Austrian Alpine Club, to form the German and Austrian Alpine Club were finally successful in 1873. John Sholto Douglass was also interested in the history and nature of his Vorarlberg homeland, so he worked with Samuel Jenny , published The Romans in Vorarlberg and collected fossils in the Vorarlberg Molasse .
John Sholto Douglass died on September 14, 1874 while hunting near Dalaas-Wald (Arlberg) when he fell from a 300 m high rock face in the Radonatobel below the Gamsbodenspitze. A plaque under the railway bridge of the Arlbergbahn commemorates him ( location ).
Publications (selection)
- Petrefacts from the molasse of Vorarlberg. In: Negotiations of the Geological Reichsanstalt 1867, pp. 219–220 ( online . PDF; 349 kB).
- Petrefacten-bearing limestone from the Gargellenthal in Vorarlberg. In: Negotiations of the Geological Reichsanstalt 1871, p. 35 ( online , PDF; 258 kB).
- The Romans in Vorarlberg. Thuringia 1870
- with Samuel Jenny: The Romans in Vorarlberg . (= Annual report of the committee of the Vorarlberger Museums-Verein in Bregenz 12). Innsbruck 1872 ( digitized version )
literature
- Helmuth Zapfe : Index Palaeontologicorum Austriae. Supplementum (= Catalogus fossilium Austriae issue 15a). Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1987, ISBN 3-7001-0948-2 , p. 158 online (PDF; 405 kB)
Web links
- Commentary on the book Die Römer in Vorarlberg (1872) in the portal of Naturfreunde Vorarlberg
- Falkenhorst and the Douglass-Poellnitz-Jehly dynasty Information page of Villa Falkenhorst
- John Sholto Douglas on ZOBODAT
- Robert Kohler: Collection Norman Douglas: Forbess family, Douglas, Pöllnitz, Jehly
- Personal folder on John Sholto Douglass, 15th Laird of Tilquhillie (PDF) in the historical Alpine archive of the Alpine clubs in Germany, Austria and South Tyrol (temporarily offline)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c see web link information page of Villa Falkenhorst
- ↑ Rama Najeeb: John Sholto Douglas. Retrieved April 27, 2018 .
- ↑ John Sholto Douglas on ZOBODAT
- ↑ a b Gunnar Strunz: Vorarlberg: With Bregenz Forest, Großem Walsertal, Arlberg and Montafon p. 139.
- ↑ Günther Flaig: Mountain and hiking guide Brandnertal p. 29.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Douglass, John Sholto |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Austrian manufacturer and local researcher |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 18, 1838 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Thuringia (Vorarlberg) |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 14, 1874 |
| Place of death | at Dalaas |