Joseph Kyselak

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Joseph Michael , mostly just Joseph , also Josef Kyselak (born March 9, 1798 in Vienna ; † September 17, 1831 ibid) was an alpinist and court chamber official in Vienna. He was known less for his travelogues and cultural interests than for the strange habit of leaving his name in large letters on hikes. This brought him fame and the inclusion in Wurzbach's Biographical Lexicon of the Empire of Austria . For graffiti culture, Kyselak is not only an important precursor, he was also the first to be considered a habitual “tagger”, as graffiti jargon calls it, as can be seen from the engravings of names on important buildings in earlier centuries ( Persepolis , Acropolis , Tower of the Strasbourg Cathedral and much more ).

Life

Joseph Michael Kyselak was born as the eldest son of the Diurnist (civil servant) Joseph Kyselack (sic) and his wife Josepha. Seiffert was born and baptized on the same day according to the entry in the baptismal register in the Vienna Piarist Church of the Maria Treu parish, to which the parents' apartment at that time in Ortisei 79 (later conscription number 100, today Lerchenfelder Straße 20) belonged. His middle name Michael, previously unknown, was given to him by his godfather Joseph Michael Kloiber, an accountant at the kk Familiengüter-Direktion. A year later his brother Wilhelm was born. Both attended the Piarist high school (today in the Josefstadt district ) and passed their final exams there. Joseph Michael then studied philosophy for a few semesters at the University of Vienna without obtaining a degree. As an intern he got a job in the authority in which his father worked: the kk private, family and Vitikalfondskassenoberdirektion . After seven years as an intern, in 1825 he applied to the court chamber for promotion to a registry accessist ; he did not get the job, the negative answer has been received.

In the same year, on August 12th, the central event of his life began, the almost four-month hike from Graz west through the Alps. It led over the Koralpe , the Drau and Möll valleys to Mallnitz , over the Mallnitzer Tauern to Bad Gastein , reached Hallein and Berchtesgaden . From there Kyselak climbed to the Hundstod (in Kyselak: "Hundskopftod)" in the Steinerne Meer , turned via Saalfelden and the Gerlos Pass into the Zillertal and crossed the main Alpine ridge to Sterzing . Over the Jaufenpass , through the upper Passeier valley and over the Timmelsjoch it went into the Ötztal , over the Wildkarspitze into the Stubaital and to Innsbruck . The plan to go down the Inn in a boat failed. Kyselak wandered to Salzburg , rafted down the Salzach and Inn rivers to Passau , from where he returned to Vienna by ship. Four years later he published his report about it, which made him known: Sketches of a foot trip through Austria, Styria, Carinthia, Berchtesgaden, Tyrol and Bavaria to Vienna - along with a romantic, picturesque depiction of several knight castles and their folk tales, mountain areas and ice glaciers on this hike, undertaken in 1825

In 1831, Kyselak fell victim to the cholera pandemic . When he was admitted to the Cholera Hospital on Vienna's Strozzigrund (which was located in the Strozzi Palace , which was adapted for this purpose ), he was already dead.

Legends

Allegedly, as a result of a bet, after which he wanted to be known throughout the monarchy in three years, he began to write and scratch his name or “Kyselak was here!” In all sorts of places in the Austrian Empire .

Kyselak's inscription on the column in Vienna's Schwarzenbergpark

It was said that he had climbed the Chimborazo in Ecuador , so that Alexander von Humboldt is said to have found the writing Kyselak there in 1837 . However, von Humboldt climbed the Chimborazo as early as 1802, and Kyselak had been dead for six years in 1837. There is also a legend that Kyselak is said to have been called to the emperor after he had "smeared" an imperial building. Franz I then forbade him to ever write his name anywhere again, whereupon Kyselak vowed improvement. When he left, the emperor found Kyselak's name and date engraved on his desk.

Kyselak himself does not mention the motivation for his strange actions in his travelogue; Only occasionally did he point out his name being affixed, for example when he visited the Kapfenberg castle ruins : I marked this strange wall, to which I now firmly glued myself, with a large black year .

One of the legends is that he was a capable alpinist. He was more of a mountain hiker, albeit a very persistent one. When he undertook his hike, on which he did not exceed today's level of difficulty II on the UIAA scale when climbing mountains, there were already challenging mountains such as the Mont Blanc (1786), the Grossglockner (1800), the Ortler (1804) or the Jungfrau (1811) ) has been climbed.

Aftermath and trivia

The practice of engraving one's name on famous tourist destinations has existed since ancient times. Travelers in the 17th and 18th centuries left their names and dates everywhere, for example Goethe on the tower of the Strasbourg Cathedral or (including a poem) on the Kickelhahn , long-distance travelers in the most remote places, for example in Tacht-e-Jamschid, the ancient Persepolis , soldiers on castles or in occupied palaces, so in the rooms of the Vatican . Kyselak can be seen in this tradition, but nobody before him has acted as a scribbler so consistently. It is worth considering seeing him as the forerunner of the “tagger” or graffiti sprayer, as he not only spread his name excessively for years, but also created a special shape for it. Kyselak's name carried on after his death. A funny poem by Joseph Victor von Scheffel ends with the words:

Illustration to the poem by Scheffels
Kyselak inscription on a rock face in the Wachau
… I look at the wild with great indignation
Monument to wild people ...
See - there be a forgiving, mild wave
Also a greeting from the present:
Dizzy from the shivers of the abyss
The highest gable protrudes, the Zack
And at the top of the wall
The name is emblazoned - KISELAK.

Some of Kyselak's inscriptions have also survived. Inscriptions can be found on the defense tower of Perchtoldsdorf and on a rock face in the Wachau between Krems and Dürnstein near Rothenhof . Today the name "Kyselak" can still be found on various walls and squares, albeit often in a mutilated form, e.g. B. as "Kisselak".

Most of the well-known Kyselak name tags are modern fakes.

An engraved Kyselak lettering is located on an obelisk in Vienna's Schwarzenbergpark . Its authenticity is disputed, if only because Kyselak has always written his name in color and never engraved. Later on, “ Kilroy was here ” and Peter-Ernst Eiffe also follow this tradition .

Around 1960 Konrad Bayer and Gerhard Rühm wrote an absurd speaking piece with the title "kyselak". In 1970 Herbert Rosendorfer wrote a short story "No trace of Kyselack". In 1882/83 Hermann Bahr used the pseudonym "Kieselak" to write German national and anti-Semitic texts for the Linzer Sonntagsblatt .

There have been imitators in the Vienna area since 2010, because the name appeared in some places where there were previously no inscriptions, such as the Wilhelmswarte am Anninger .

Movie

Nikolaus Barton as Joseph Kyselak
  • Kyselak was there - graffiti in 1825

Film processing of the results of the Kyselak project. An English version of the documentation (voice-over-synchro) was also produced under the title Kyselak, the first graffiti-tagger .

literature

Web links

Commons : Joseph Kyselak  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Lorenz : “Concerning Kyselak” (Vienna, 2015) accessed on July 13, 2015. Michael Lorenz's date of birth, December 22, 1799, has been proven to be incorrect.
  2. ↑ Michael Lorenz : "Concerning Kyselak"
  3. ↑ printed by Anton Pichler, Vienna 1829
  4. ↑ Stefan Winkle: History of the Cholera Pandemic - 1830/1831 , archive link ( Memento of the original from May 20, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed July 13, 2015 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.aerztekammer-hamburg.de
  5. ↑ Lorenz [1] For this purpose noticed: All sources related to Kyselak's death - most of Which Remained unknown to the authors - prove did Kyselak died on 17 September 1831 and did the date on his Sperrs ratio (NB .: probate proceedings ) is wrong. He also did not die at the cholera hospital at Strozzigrund 26 (today's Strozzi Palace), but was already dead on arrival at this hospital .
  6. ↑ http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Scheffel,+Joseph+Viktor+von/Gedichte/Gaudeamus.+Lieder+aus+dem+Engeren+und+Weiteren/Aus+dem+Weiteren/Der+Aggstein
  7. ↑ The engraving cannot be seen on a photograph from 1910 .
  8. ↑ Michael Lorenz published a photo in [2] and commented: “Kyselak's name on the left of two obelisks in the Schwarzenbergpark in Neuwaldegg. It is highly unlikely that this engraving (Kyselak always used paint) is genuine. A photograph of this obelisk, taken in 1910 (A-Wn, 80.028B), does not show the inscription. "
  9. ↑ The City of Vienna, on the other hand, assumes on its official website that the graffito comes from Kyselak himself. See the Schwarzenbergpark article on www.wien.gv.at
  10. ↑ "kyselak" by Konrad Bayer and Gerhard Rühm as an mp3 download from ubu.com
  11. ↑ http://www.univie.ac.at/bahr/?q=node/3093
  12. ^ The Anninger story of November 6, 2011, accessed November 26, 2011.
personal data
SURNAME Kyselak, Joseph
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kyselak, Josef; Kyselak, Joseph Michael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian alpinist and court chamber official
DATE OF BIRTH March 9, 1798
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH September 17, 1831
Place of death Vienna