Rudolf Leuzinger

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Rudolf Leuzinger

Rudolf Leuzinger (born December 17, 1826 in Netstal , † January 11, 1896 in Mollis ) was a Swiss cartographer . He is considered one of the most productive cartographers and best interpreters of mountain landscapes and geological forms. He was the first to produce terrain maps in color lithography .

Life

After training as a map engraver at Joh. Wurster & Comp. in Winterthur , which was headed by the cartographer Jacob Melchior Ziegler , he worked for Wurster for several years as a cartographer on the topographic maps of the canton of St. Gallen and the canton of Appenzell.

In 1859 he made his own and founded a cartographic and lithographic institution in the city Glarus . She soon became known for her scientifically and technically valuable productions, including card engravings. In 1860 he was by Emperor Napoleon III. commissioned to make some maps for his Histoire de Jules César in Paris. At the invitation of the Bern government, he began to work for the cantonal forestry and construction department in Bern in 1861, where he created several school maps, tourist maps and maps as supplements to a series of scientific papers.

When the Swiss Alpine Club , newly founded in 1863, decided to publish yearbooks with maps, a new field of work opened up. Many tour maps were engraved by Leuzinger and almost all volumes contained works by his hand. The tour maps were often based on the original geodetic recordings of the Federal Topographical Bureau and so there was a close relationship with this organization, in particular with Colonel Hermann Siegfried .

The Federal Assembly of 1868 decided to publish a new topographic atlas of Switzerland . Siegfried commissioned Leuzinger with the difficult engravings of the mountains based on the original maps by Dufour ( Dufour map ) and Siegfried ( Siegfried map ) himself.

When his daughter Rosina Susanna married in 1876, Leuzinger became the father-in-law of Eduard Rubin , Swiss colonel and inventor of the full jacket bullet and the military Schmidt-Rubin rifles.

Leuzinger died of heart failure at the age of 69.

plant

Map of the Albula area from 1893

His more than 300 maps are a rare combination of accuracy, scientific thoroughness and craftsmanship and have earned him several national and international awards. His work at Wurster included the topographic maps of the cantons of St. Gallen and the cantons of Appenzell (16 sheets, 1849-1851), the atlas of all continents (1851), the hypsometric atlas (1856) and the topographical map of the island of Madeira (1856) ).

For the Siegfried map, Leuzinger produced the high mountain sheets with 117 monochrome engravings , which attracted attention at home and abroad. He created maps of Switzerland, the cantons of Aargau, Bern, Freiburg, Glarus, Graubünden, Neuchâtel, St. Gallen and Ticino as well as special maps of central Switzerland, the Bernese Oberland, the area around Grindelwald , the Albula region , the Rigi , in copper engraving or chromolithography . the island of Sumbawa , the school map of Switzerland from 1895, a large map of France, relief maps of Switzerland, southern Bavaria, Tyrol and Salzburg, Palestine, a travel map of northern Italy, a railroad map of Europe, small maps for Baedeker and Meyer's travel books as well as the terrain drawing on the maps of the Rhone Glacier and on Xaver Imfeld's Montblanc map.

“From Mollis (Canton Glarus) comes the mourning news that the famous cartographer Rudolf Leuzinger has died. His death is a grave, irreplaceable loss not only for his family, but also just as much for Swiss cartography. What he achieved for the same, he drew with a scientifically reliable artist's hand on countless lithographic stones and thereby secured his memory among his future and future generations. He was an unsurpassed master in the representation of the high mountains, in the delicacy and fidelity of the characteristics, in the plastic reproduction of the terrain. Numerous sheets of the Siegfried Atlas, his travel and school maps [;] testify to this in his last work, the Imfeldsche Montblanc- [K] arte, which will soon be available from Schmid, Francke & Co. in Bern (official depository of federal maps ) should appear. Thanks to his school cards, which are distributed in hundreds of thousands of copies, Leuzinger has been a loyal guide to local history for just as many Swiss children in their early youth, and his cards have become an indispensable and reliable guide for many thousands of tourists, locals and strangers who wandered through the beautiful country Companion."

- Obituary in the Illustrirten Welt , issue 16 1896

literature

  • L. Held: Cartographer Rudolf Leuzinger. Yearbook of the Swiss Alpine Club XXXI, Bern 1896, pages 296–303.
  • German Review for Geography and Statistics XVIII, 1896, pages 279–282 (with picture)
  • Geographical Yearbook XX , 1897, page 474.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ L. Held: Cartographer Rudolf Leuzinger. In: The Alps. 1895, accessed on January 11, 2021 (reproduced from the Swiss Alpine Club).
  2. ^ Map of Switzerland. In: e-rara. 1876, Retrieved January 11, 2021 . Map of Switzerland for schools. In: e-rara. 1877, accessed January 11, 2021 . Relief map of Switzerland. In: Gallica.bnf. Retrieved January 11, 2021 .
  3. ^ Rudolf Leuzinger †. :  The illustrated world. Leaves from nature and life, science and art for entertainment and instruction for the family, for all and everyone / Illustrirte Welt. German family book. Leaves from nature and life, science and art / The book for everyone / Illustrated world united with book for everyone. Illustrierte Familien-Zeitung , year 1896, p. 390 (online at ANNO ).Template: ANNO / Maintenance / tew

Web links

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personal data
SURNAME Leuzinger, Rudolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss cartographer
DATE OF BIRTH December 17, 1826
PLACE OF BIRTH Netstal
DATE OF DEATH January 11, 1896
Place of death Mollis