The time after Born

Several expeditions to North and Central America, as well as to Africa, were also initiated by Joseph II, which were mainly carried out with the intention of acquiring zoological, botanical and ethnographic specimens for the Viennese collection. One of the participants was Franz Boos, gardening assistant, who also presented the Emperor with two large rock crystals from Madagascar as a gift from the royal French engineer Cossigni. One of these crystals, a beautiful elongated prismatic transparent crystal is displayed to this date in Room I of the Mineral Collection.
 

Emperor Leopold II (1747-1792) followed Joseph II after the latter's death in 1790 as sovereign. Although he was only two years in office, he also enlarged the extent of the collection by his purchase of the opulent mineral collection of Field Marshall Andreas Count of Hadik. Leopold II was succeeded on the Imperial Throne by Franz II (1768-1835). Due to the events of the Napoleonic Wars, Franz II renounced the Imperial crown of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, remaining Emperor of Austria as Franz I.

 

However, long before then, i.e. in 1788, Andreas Xaverius Stütz, Professor of Natural History and Geography and formerly canon of the choirmasters of St. Augustine, becomes Assistant Director of the Natural History Collection, replacing Karl Haidinger, who is appointed Mine and Professor of Mathematics and Mechanics at the Mining Academy in Schemnitz.

 

Stütz had been long concerned with the geognostic conditions at his native Lower Austria and had published several mineralogical papers. He begins, supported by the custodian Johann Carl Megerle, who particularly took care of the minerals and part of the Mollusc Collection, with the subject which all co-workers had avoided until then, the inventory-taking of specimens from the geosphere. Using these data, a catalogue of specimens of natural historical interest, the "Catalogus Stützianus" was drawn up; it was hand-written, possibly by Stütz himself. Although an entry-book ("Einschreibebuch") had existed since 1780, it was clearly not used in every case and the inventory numbers, issued at a much later date, but still valid to date, are not entered. The same applies to a series of loose-leaf archive-pages and notes by mineralogists from earlier times. The co-ordination of the old pre-1797 mineral samples in the collection is very difficult, if possible at all. As pointed out previously, the "Catalogus Stützianus" augured a new era for the Viennese Mineral Collection.

 

Einschreibebuch für Zusendungen und Erwerbungen des Mineralien-Cabinets für den Zeitraum 1780 bis 1805.
Einschreibebuch für Zusendungen und Erwerbungen des Mineralien-Cabinets für den Zeitraum 1780 bis 1805.
Andreas Xaverius Stütz (1747-1806). 1788 wird er an die Naturaliensammlung berufen und zum Director-Adjunct bestellt.
Andreas Xaverius Stütz (1747-1806). 1788 wird er an die Naturaliensammlung berufen und zum Director-Adjunct bestellt.
Karl Maria Haidinger (1756-1797), K.k. Bergrath und Referent bei der k.k. Hofkammer im Münz- und Bergwesen.
Karl Maria Haidinger (1756-1797), K.k. Bergrath und Referent bei der k.k. Hofkammer im Münz- und Bergwesen.
Catalogus Stützianus, erster Katalog der Mineraliensammlung.
Catalogus Stützianus, erster Katalog der Mineraliensammlung.
  
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