Richard Payer

Richard Payer (born January 15, 1836 in Teplitz-Schönau , Bohemia , † after 1912) was an Austrian explorer in South America .

Life

Payer studied soil and administration science at the Prague Polytechnic , worked as administrator of the Arnau domain and then traveled to Russia and Europe. At the beginning of 1876 he left for Brazil .

Payer carried out research trips to the Andes and the Amazon . He stayed there for over thirty years and made numerous drawings, watercolors , maps and diaries, some of which are still preserved today. The Natural History Museum in Vienna has a detailed, hand-drawn map of Peru and the adjacent areas of Ecuador , Brazil and Bolivia .

His older brother was Julius Payer , the discoverer of the Franz Josef Land , a group of islands in the Arctic Ocean . A third brother, Hugo Payer, died of tuberculosis at the age of 20 . In the 1890s, Richard Payer lived temporarily again in Teplitz, most recently he lived near Melk. He had a daughter named Paula who lived as a singer in Bamberg .

While Julius Payer received an honorary grave in the central cemetery of Vienna , the date and place of death of Richard Payer is not known.

literature

• Franz Wawrik : The New World. Austria and the exploration of America. Austrian National Library, Brandstätter, Vienna 1992, ISBN 3-85447-443-1 , p. 139.
• Elisabeth Zeilinger: The horrors of the water and the jungle. The Amazon explorer Richard Payer. In: Elisabeth Zeilinger (Ed.): Austria and the New World. Symposium in the Austrian National Library. Conference proceedings. Austrian National Library, Vienna 1993, ISBN 3-01-000010-X , pp. 157–169.
• Vasco Tagliapietra:  Richard Payer's trips to South America. In:  Neues Wiener Tagblatt. Democratic organ / Neues Wiener Abendblatt. Evening edition of the (") Neue Wiener Tagblatt (") / Neues Wiener Tagblatt. Evening edition of the Neue Wiener Tagblatt / Wiener Mittagsausgabe with Sportblatt / 6 o'clock evening paper / Neues Wiener Tagblatt. Neue Freie Presse - Neues Wiener Journal / Neues Wiener Tagblatt , September 9, 1912, p. 12 (online at ANNO ).