Isidor Weinberger (1837 - 1915)

Weinberger came to Dognaczka in the Banat in his capacity as official with the provincial administration of the Hungarian National Railway Works. He was fascinated by the diversity of the minerals occurring in the area and began to collect stones at a very early age.

Later on, he was called to the head office of the Railway Works in Vienna. Together with his friend Karl Wittgenstein, Weinberger acquired a defunct iron mine in Bohemia. Weinberger made his fortune by re-activating the mine and by successfully selling the slag which had previously only been deposited onto slag heaps. Due to an illness which prevented him from working full-time, Weinberger began to occupy himself with the extension of his mineral collection; so much so that it became one of the best in the Empire. Weinberger was one of the founding members of the Viennese Mineralogical Society in 1901, known today as the Austrian Mineralogical Society. He greatly supported the mineralogical sciences and was one of the most important patrons of the Imperial Natural History Museum of the time. After the First World War, Weinberger’s collection came into the hands of Dr. Hans Karabacek, a machine engineer and subsequent director of the Steyr Works. Today, it comprises part of the collection of Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
  
Online-Tickets