Murithienne
The Murithienne (full French name La Murithienne, Société valaisanne des Sciences Naturelles ) is a scientific association in the canton of Valais in Switzerland .
She is a member of the Swiss Academy of Sciences .
Surname
The organization was founded in 1861 as Société murithienne du Valais and soon changed its name to Société murithienne de botanique and in 1884 to the current name.
The name pays homage to the important Valais natural scientist , alpinist, antiquarian and clergyman in the Augustinian community of the great Saint Bernard Laurent-Joseph Murith (1742–1816), who came from Sembrancher . We owe him some archaeological discoveries at the top of the Great St. Bernard Pass , where more than 500 Celtic and Roman coins came to light. He compiled catalogs of the rocks and flora of the Valais and corresponded with Albrecht von Haller (1708–1777) and the Geneva naturalist Horace Bénédict de Saussure (1740–1799), whom he led on an Alpine trip to the Otemma glacier . In May 1800, Prior Murith accompanied the First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte on his Italian campaign in the Second Coalition War from Martigny to the Great Saint Bernard. Murith is one of the founding members of the Swiss Academy of Sciences.
history
Some people from Lower Valais interested in researching the flora of the canton of Valais founded the Société Murithienne association in Saint-Maurice on November 13, 1861 . They were Jacques-Etienne D'Angreville in Saint-Maurice, the Canons of Saint-Maurice Abbey Auguste Bertrand, Maurice Gard and Pierre Burnier, the veterinarian Onésime Cornut from Vouvry , the Englishman Jame-Henry Dixon, the pharmacist Otto Hang in Saint- Maurice, Gaspard-Abdon de la Soie and Pierre Tissières, both Canons of the Great Saint Bernard, the pharmacist César Mérioz in Martigny, the doctor Pierre Rodon in Saint-Gingolph , the doctor Adolf Schmid from Leukerbad and Etienne Taramarcaz in Martigny-Ville .
In the first few years, the association members dealt almost exclusively with the flora and particularly supported the botanical gardens in the Alps. Over time, the range of work was expanded to include the fauna of the Valais, its geology and glacier science. On an excursion in 1933, the assembly of the Murithienne crossed the Great Aletsch Glacier , and in 1934 a group of seventy members followed the exposed and dangerous path along the Bisse du Torrent-Neuf aqueduct from Savièse . In 1948 the Murithienne campaigned for the integral protection of the Pfynwald . And in other parts of the canton , too, it made nature conservation heard, such as the Aletsch Forest and the Derborence area .
Thanks to the natural history of the Valais landscape, experts from other Swiss cantons soon joined the Murithienne. By 1880 the association already had 130 members. In 1945 there were around 500, in 2011 630 members.
Following the example of Laurent-Joseph Murith, some of the canons of the Great Saint Bernard also committed themselves to natural history. An important researcher in Valais is the canon Ignace Mariétan (1882–1971), born in Val d'Illiez , who presided over the Murithienne for almost half a century, from 1924 to 1971; In 1946 the society elected him as its president for life. Mariétan opened the club's program to a wider audience and began organizing excursions that were open to the general public. The Ignace Mariétan Foundation continues its work by supporting the activities of the Murithienne Society .
In 1933, Ignace Mariétan set up the cantonal nature conservation commission for Valais.
The Murithienne supports various scientific research projects, including the Flore du Valais study , for which she collaborates with the Flore Alp Alpine Garden in Champex-Lac and the Valais Nature Museum .
She is one of the founders of Nature-Culture-Tourisme, an organization that was established in 2011 to ensure the quality of didactic offers on natural history and cultural history sites in Valais.
Bulletin de la Murithienne
The Bulletin de la Murithienne has been published annually since 1861. It is the most important organ in Valais for scientific work and publishes articles in French and German as well as the association's annual reports.
The articles in the journal have been digitized and are available as PDF files on the network of French-speaking Switzerland libraries.
President
- Pierre-Germain Tissière (1828–1868), canon of the Great Saint Bernherd, 1861–1868
- Gaspard de la Soie (1818–1877), Canon of the Great Saint Bernherd, 1868–1869
- Charles Fauconnet (1811–1876), Geneva , 1869–1875
- Ferdinand-Otto Wolf (1886–1897), teacher in Sion , 1875–1883
- Louis Favrat (1827–1893), writer and botanist, Lausanne , 1883–1884
- Ferdinand-Otto Wolf, 1884-1894
- Ernest Wilczek (1867–1948), botanist and pharmacist, Lausanne, 1895–1896
- Maurice Besse (1897–1924), canon of the Great Saint Bernhard in Lens , 1896–1924
- Ignace Mariétan (1882–1971), canon, 1924–1971
- Henri Pellissier (1930–2016), Canon of Saint-Maurice Abbey , 1971–1980
- Jean-Claude Praz, biologist, director of the Wallis Nature Museum , 1980–1991
- Christian Werlen, forest engineer, 1991–1998
- Régine Bernard, hydrobiologist, since 1998
literature
- Ignace Mariétan: Histoire de la Murithienne de 1861 à 1961. In: Bulletin de la Murithienne. Volume 78, 1961, pp. 1-20.
- Jean-Bernard Wyer, Jacqueline Detraz-Meroz: Repertoire des Bulletins de La Murithienne 1 à 116 (1861-1998). 2003, ISBN 2-88426-056-0 .
Web links
- Murithienne website (French)
Individual evidence
- ^ Pierre-Germain Tissière: Notice sur le chanoine L.-J. Murith. In: Bulletin de la Murithienne. 1900, p. 161.
- ^ Fondation Ignace Mariétan (French)
- ↑ Nature - Culture & Tourisme. Un projet pour valoriser les sites et sentiers didactiques du Valais, accessed on August 18, 2020.
- ^ Décès du chanoine Henri Pellissier. Saint-Maurice Abbey, November 4, 2016, accessed August 18, 2020.
- ^ Cathrine Kille Elsig: De la terre à l'humanité. e directeur du Musée de la nature du Valais a pris sa retraite cette semaine. In: Le Nouvelliste . 1st June 2013.