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If citizen science is translated as citizen science, the name “Österreich forscht” from the local website citizen-science.at is an apt name. The following definition can be found here: "To put it very simply, scientific projects in citizen science are carried out with the help or entirely of interested amateurs [Latin amator "lovers"]. The citizen scientists formulate research questions, report observations, carry out measurements, evaluate data and/or write publications. Compliance with scientific criteria is a prerequisite. This not only enables new scientific projects and new findings, but also enables a dialogue between science and society that is otherwise not possible or only possible with great difficulty." To be up to date, we recommend the book "The Science of Citizen Science", which was published by Katrin Vohland, General Director of the Natural History Museum in Vienna, and co-authors.
Of those projects that were carried out when the term citizen science did not yet exist, the annual bird counts are singled out. Currently, reference is made to the “Hour of the Winter Birds” by Birdlife Austria. In January, 21,863 people counted no fewer than 504,205 birds throughout Germany. Citizen Science at its best!
“Call” – on the occasion of the Laibach earthquake on April 14, 1895
Earthquake reports are part of the involvement that goes back a long time and is firmly anchored in the population. On the website of the Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics (ZAMG) there is a form in which 17 questions (often multiple choice) have to be answered; the postal code and the location of the observation are mandatory. The beginnings go back to the Earthquake Commission of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna, the predecessor institution of the earthquake service at the ZAMG, founded in 1904.
The trigger for systematic earthquake surveys was the devastating earthquake in Ljubljana in Slovenia on April 14, 1895. The earthquake was felt within a radius of 350 kilometers. The geologist Franz Eduard Suess (1867–1941) was sent to the site to assess the damage. He published his observations in a nearly 500-page monograph. While Suess was on site, his superior, the deputy director of the k. k. Geological Reichsanstalt, Edmund Mojsisovics, more than 1,000 survey forms with 14 questions in the earthquake area. If you read the "call" from April 19th, it corresponded to today's criteria for citizen science: "The request is therefore made to the educated public of all levels to support the planned scientific work by sending relevant messages to the direction of the Imperial and Royal Geological Institute (Vienna, III., Rasumoffskygasse 23), taking into account the following questions."
1876: "Mr. Editor! – Yours sincerely, August Holzer"
While Mojsisovics formulated 14 questions for the Ljubljana earthquake, which provided the impetus for the establishment of the Earthquake Commission of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna, which Suess evaluated, there was a scientific institution behind it with concrete and structured questions. However, earthquake records in chronicles of monasteries etc. go back much further and were recorded by individual chroniclers based on subjective perceptions.
With the increasing number of daily newspapers in the second half of the 19th century, interaction between those who wrote and those who read emerged. From around the 1870s onwards you can find letters to the editor that usually begin with "Mr. Redacteur!" or “Highly commendable editorial team”. They have personal concerns or perceptions as their content and seek less the ear of the editor and more the attention of the readership. As an example, a look at the "Earthquake in Vienna", was the headline in the "Presse" of July 18, 1876. According to an editorial report in which numerous observations are summarized ("In the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the files fell out of the filing cabinets; an usher even fell from his chair to the floor"), among the numerous letters to the editor you can also find the following:
"Mr. Editor! Today I was with my wife in the checkout room of my bathing establishment (Holzer's bathing establishment on the left bank of the new Danube, next to the Reichsbrücke) when suddenly between ½ and ¾ of 2 o'clock in the afternoon there were five violent tremors in the direction from southeast to northwest. The shocks were so violent that we were afraid of falling off our chairs, boxes and other furnishings swayed and the pictures on the walls get into a perpendicular movement […]"
Such letters to the editor show the population's willingness to share their observations - a knowledge potential that needed to be accessed in a structured manner. Lines like these could be Edmund v. Mojsisovics (1839–1907) created his questionnaire in 1895.
1847: "Call to observe periodic natural phenomena"
In 1846, in the pre-March period, the Society of Friends of Natural Sciences was formed in Vienna around the mineralogist Wilhelm Haidinger (1795–1871). In addition to regular meetings, from 1846 onwards there was also a series of publications, the "Reports on communications from friends of the natural sciences in Vienna", in which the broad spectrum of the natural sciences can be found. This includes an article in volume two written in 1847 by Carl Hammerschmidt (1801–1874), a Viennese naturalist who, as Abdullah Bey, was one of the co-founders of the Turkish Red Crescent in Constantinople, with the significant title "Call for the observation of periodic natural phenomena in vegetation". Hier referiert er über Beobachtungen periodischer Vegetationserscheinungen und betont, dass diese unbedingt nach einem "bestimmten gemeinsamen Plan" gemacht werden müssen, sonst seien sie zwecklos.
Once again he points to the pioneering role of the USA, where there were more than 30 observation sites at which flowering times, fruit ripening, but also the arrival and departure of migratory birds were observed. These “branches of natural research” were also devoted to these “branches of natural research” in Brussels, Munich, Prague, Regensburg and Stockholm. The Academy in Brussels had already designed four "tables" in 1843, three of which were intended for plants and one for animal observations. Thanks to the observations, it was possible to derive a number of general observations. Hammerschmidt thought that it would be possible to “found an instructive science” from this.
In his final conclusion he sums up: "At the end we take the liberty of asking all those friends of the natural sciences who are interested in this important subject to send their observations, recorded in a table, to Mr. Bergrath Haidinger, who is so highly deserving of the promotion of the natural sciences, or to us, in order to be able to collect isolated observations and use them for common purposes that promote science."
Aspects of citizen science can also be seen here. Once again, these lines show that in Europe in the 1840s people relied on structured observations of nature from a broader range of people. The Wilhelm Haidinger mentioned here, who was one of the co-founders of the Academy of Sciences in 1847 before he was appointed founding director of the Geological Institute in 1849, was one of the key figures in the natural sciences in Vienna at the time. This is even carved in stone on the tombstone of his honorary grave in Vienna's Central Cemetery: "The founder of scientific life in his fatherland." (Thomas Hofmann, February 17, 2021)