Karl Kupelwieser

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Karl Kupelwieser , also written Carl Kupelwieser (born October 30, 1841 in Vienna ; † September 16, 1925 at Gut Seehof near Lunz am See , Lower Austria ), was an Austrian lawyer , farmer and forest manager and patron .

family

Seehof Castle in Lunz am See, ancestral home of the Kupelwieser family

Karl Kupelwieser was the son of the then famous painter Leopold Kupelwieser . His younger brother Paul Kupelwieser was the steel manager of the Witkowitz iron works of Albert Rothschild and “discoverer and civilizer” of the Brioni group of islands. Karl joined the share consortium of the Teplitz rolling mills, whose management his brother-in-law Karl Wittgenstein had taken over. The consortium soon acquired the property of the Bohemian Mining Company and the majority of the votes of the Prague Iron Industry Company . Karl acted as a legal adviser in the consortium. This gave him great wealth.

Bertha Kupelwieser

His wife Bertha Kupelwieser was born Wittgenstein , then a very wealthy family in Austria . Karl was thus the brother-in-law of Karl Wittgenstein and the uncle of Ludwig Wittgenstein , the well-known philosopher. Her son Hans Kupelwieser was a well-known zoologist and marine biologist, but after 1918 he could only devote himself to the economic development of his father's estate in Lunz.

On June 8, 1909, Bertha was killed in a car accident when a front wheel came off between Inzersdorf and Biedermannsdorf, causing the car to drive into the ditch, overturning and burying her. She died immediately, the chauffeur and Karl survived seriously injured.

Agriculture and Forestry

The agricultural school founded by Kupelwieser in 1913 in Heuberg ( Pyhra community )

In 1891 Kupelwieser's wife Bertha bought the estate Kyrnberg in Pyhra near St. Pölten from the inheritance that her mother had left her, where she produced Gervais cheese , for which she had trademark protection from 1896. Karl Kupelwieser had an agricultural school for mountain farming built in Pyrha, which he equipped with residential and farm buildings as well as the necessary teaching aids. His wife financed the shell of the hospital in Scheibbs . Karl Kupelwieser made further sums available for the expansion after his wife had a fatal accident. A bust of Bertha Kupelwieser still stands in the hospital's entrance hall today.

In 1897 Karl Kupelwieser acquired the Seehof-Hirschtal estate near Lunz am See from the property of Count Festetics von Tolna . Until its abolition (1782), the Seehof was an economic asset of the famous Gaming Charterhouse . Under Karl Kupelwieser, agriculture was again strongly promoted by a Haflinger stud farm, cattle breeding by Montafon Brown Swiss cattle, useful plant experiments ( Jerusalem artichoke ) and trout breeding . There was also a steam-powered dairy, a sawmill and, in 1924, a hydroelectric power plant that is still in operation today. The forests were also used as "volunteer goods" for large game hunting.

Promoter of scientific research

Then he devoted himself to his great interest in scientific research. He had a friendship with the ichthyologist Rudolf Kner . The Ichthyologie (fish customer) is a branch of biology . It is the science of the biology of fish in natural and man-made conditions. Karl was the founder of the Institute for Radium Research and the Biological Station Lunz am See . This was initially housed in the castle; In 1906 he assigned this institute to a small porter's house on his castle grounds, which was gradually expanded into a biological station. The Kupelwiesers financed these institutes until 1920. Last but not least, it characterizes Karl Kupelwieser's patronage when he donated a valuable silver trophy on the occasion of the 1st Austrian Gliding Week, which took place from October 13 to 21, 1923 on the Waschberg near Stockerau. With the engraved dedication "I. Österr. Segelflugwoche / 1923 / the designer of the / most successful Austrian glider / Kupelwieser", this - together with the honorary award of the Vienna Automobile Club for the designer of the Austrian glider of best overall success - went to the then 29-year-old Viennese graduate engineer Alois Kermer (1894–1967). In 2018, Kermer's nephew, Wolfgang Kermer , presented both the trophy and personal documents to the archive of the Vienna University of Technology as a gift. The award-winning aircraft, which was exhibited in the Technisches Museum Wien for decades , is currently in the depot for reasons of space.

Kupelwieser was an honorary member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences . He is buried not far from his father Leopold in the Grinzinger Friedhof in Vienna (group 10, row 1, number 12).

In 2003 the academy decided to close the station in Lunz. Since then, research has been continued within the framework of WasserCluster Lunz GmbH, a cooperation between the University of Vienna , the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, and the Danube University Krems .

Afterlife

In Lunz am See the Dr. Carl Kupelwieser Promenade named after him, in Pyhra, where he founded and financed an agricultural school, there is a Dr.-Carl-Kupelwieser-Straße .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Another serious automobile accident. Frau Kupelwieser dead. In:  Reichspost , June 9, 1909, p. 8 (online at ANNO ).Template: ANNO / Maintenance / rpt
  2. ↑ Herbert Rauch Höphffner: The first car accident on the way to Laxenburg - 1909. (PDF) In: Kulturstein. The newspaper of the Alt-Laxenburg cultural association. No. 59 September 2003, p. 6 , accessed February 7, 2016 .
  3. ↑ Lunz am See water cluster opened ; http://www.wasserkluster-lunz.ac.at/
personal data
SURNAME Kupelwieser, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian lawyer, patron and farmer
DATE OF BIRTH October 30, 1841
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH September 16, 1925
Place of death Seehof near Lunz am See , Lower Austria