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Johann August Edmund Mojsisovics Edler von Mojsvár, his full name, came from a good family. His father, a doctor at the Vienna General Hospital, was ennobled as a nobleman of Moisvár by Emperor Franz Joseph in 1858. In the summer, the family, like many others who could afford it, fled the stuffy imperial capital and royal seat to the countryside. The Mojsisovics' summer resort address was where the imperial family also took a spa treatment. In the Ischler-Bade-Blatt (the "Bad" only came to "Ischl" in 1906) the following guests can be found from 1853 onwards: "Mr. Georg Mojsisovics, Dr. in medicine and k.k. primary doctor, with family, from Vienna." It was here that the young Edmund (born October 18, 1839), a student at the Schottengymnasium, discovered his love for nature and the mountains in the summer months. After high school, he turned to law. He completed his law studies on July 22, 1864 at the University of Graz. The fact that he never worked as a lawyer was probably because his love for the local mountains was greater than his interest in legal texts.
While still a student, the then 23-year-old initiated a groundbreaking project together with Paul Grohmann (1838 to 1908) and Guido Freiherr von Sommaruga (1842 to 1895). The three founded the Alpine Club in the fall of 1862. His teacher and mentor, the geologist Eduard Suess (1831 to 1914), remembers: "In my lectures there was often talk of the Alps and in the winter semester of 1861/62 one of my students, Edmund v. Mojsisovics, told me that he and two of his friends, Paul Grohmann and Baron Guido Sommaruga, had the intention of founding an Alpine club." Suess supported this initiative, the aim of which was clearly defined: "To spread and expand knowledge of the Alps, with particular attention to the Austrian ones, to promote love for them, and to facilitate their travel." The club's statutes were approved at the beginning of July 1862. When the formal founding meeting took place on November 19, 1862, there were more than 600 members, including prominent names such as the geographer Friedrich Simony. The botanist Eduard Fenzl (1808 to 1879) was elected chairman. Grohman and Mojsisovics, secretaries from the very beginning, not only edited the Alpine Club's publications, but also contributed mountaineering articles. Mojsisovics, then still a law student, wrote in Volume 1 (1863) about the "ascent" of the Hochalmspitze, the Reiß and Kollinkofels in Carinthia and the old glaciers of the Southern Alps.
As a young law student, Mojsisovics, who was interested in the mountains, listened to paleontological lectures from Eduard Suess, who from the winter semester of 1862 read not only paleontological but also geological topics. On December 2, 1862, the 23-year-old Studiosus presented the assembled geologists of the k.k. Geological Reichsanstalt (today: GeoSphere Austria) his view of the Hierlatz layers (Jurassic / Mesozoic). In doing so, he followed the “urgent request” of his teacher Suess. He realized that the young Mojsisovic's passion lay with rocks and fossils, not with paragraphs. His assessment was correct. On February 17, 1865, the ambitious Edmund applied to the k.k. Geological Reichsanstalt as an unpaid volunteer. "The same [Reichsanstalt] would like to accept the graduates as voluntary members into the closer association of the institution [sic!]." The next day Mojsisovics was accepted, further milestones were: 1869 assistant geologist, 1873 chief geologist, 1879 Oberbergrat and from 1892 deputy director.
The last decades of the 19th century saw a peak in Triassic research. At that time, the highly complex sequence of ancient marine deposits was structured chronologically during the Triassic, the oldest period of the Mesozoic period (251.9 to 201.4 million years before today). The fundamental work took place in the Alps (“Alpine Trias”), with the Salzkammergut playing a key role. Mojsisovics has made a name for himself in the temporal structure (stratigraphy) of the Upper Triassic. Based on ammonites (=fossil cephalopods), he developed a structure in the region of Hallstatt and Aussee in the Salzkammergut and Hall in Tyrol that became valid worldwide and - just like the Alpine Club - should endure. In 1869 he established the terms "Carnian" (237 to 227 million years) and "Norian stage" (227 to 208.5 million years), thereby naming sections of the Upper Triassic. In 1893, Alexander Bittner (1850 to 1902), also a geologist at the k.k. Geological Institute and at the same time Mojsisovics' fiercest rival, the Ladinian (242 to 237 million years), established a stage of the Middle Triassic that is also still valid today.
Mojsisovics had published his work on the Alpine Triassic in large monographs (1873 and 1893). The underlying ammonites fill the GeoSphere Austria collections and serve as a reference for comparative research. In addition to processing the fossils, Mojsisovics also carried out geological mapping in the Salzkammergut between 1880 and 1884. The map sheet Ischl and Hallstatt (1:75,000), on which Bittner also worked, appeared in 1905.
In addition to his work in the Salzkammergut, he was also active in the Dolomites. In his major geological work, "The Dolomite Reefs of South Tyrol and Veneto: Contributions to the Formation History of the Alps" (1879), he compared the fossil reefs of the Dolomites (Triassic) with recent reefs. Since Charles Darwin (1809 to 1882), whose theories he followed, had worked on reefs, he sent him his dolomite work. Darwin was delighted that Mojsisovics was applying his theory of descent in the fossil realm, as he wrote to him on June 1, 1878. "What a wonderful change in the future of geological chronology you indicate, by assuming the descent theory to be established, & then taking the graduated changes of the same group of organisms as the true standard!". Darwin had not expected that he would live to see this. "I never hoped to live to see such a step even proposed by anyone."
When the Geological Institute was commissioned to explore Bosnia in March 1879, the three executants were quickly found. In addition to Mojsisovics and Bittner, the slightly younger geologist Emil Tietze (1845 to 1931) also set off for Sarajevo in May 1879. The geological map including explanations was completed in 1880.
In 1881, at the Second International Geological Congress in Bologna, Mojsisovics, as representative of Austria-Hungary, suggested and decided to publish a geological map of Europe 1: 1,500,000. Mojsisovics was elected to the editorial committee. The map was printed in 1913. He enjoyed international reputation; In 1904 the University of Cambridge awarded him an honorary doctorate.
In 1871 he completed his habilitation in special geology at the philosophical faculty of the University of Vienna and also gave lectures. In 1876 he turned down the offer of a professorship in geology at the University of Innsbruck. Prague and Graz, which were also up for discussion, were not an issue for him; he preferred to do research in Vienna.
In addition to all the merits as a full-time geologist of international stature, he also remained true to his early passion, mountaineering. From 1886 to 1891 he was chairman of the Austria section of the Alpine Club. When the Reitsteig from Hallstatt to the Dachstein was opened in September 1890, the people of Hallstatt thanked him by awarding him honorary citizenship.
Mojsisovics never put himself in the foreground, but he knew what to do when it mattered. When Laibach was shaken by a violent earthquake (magnitude 6) on the Easter weekend, April 14th and 15th, 1895, the dishes in the kitchen counters rattled in Vienna too. At the k. k. The Reich Geological Institute saw a need for action. Its director, Guido Stache, was on vacation.
Mojsisovics served as deputy director and knew what had to be done: On Tuesday, April 16th, he wrote to the ministry that on Monday, April 15th, he had already instructed the geologist Franz Eduard Suess (1867 to 1941), son of his teacher and mentor Eduard Suess, "to go to the Schütter area without delay". While Suess was in the disaster area in Slovenia, Mojsisovics proved to be an innovative crisis manager in Vienna. On April 19, he prepared a "call" with 14 questions regarding perceptions of the quake, which was sent to the affected areas. The campaign was a complete success. The young Suess, who studied the earthquake scientifically, evaluated "1,300 positive reports from more than 900 locations and over 200 negative reports [that] had been sent directly to the Imperial and Royal Geological Institute."
Mojsisovics, who was a real member of the Academy of Sciences, acted in a visionary manner. Ten days after the earthquake, on April 25, 1895, he submitted a proposal to the academy to establish an earthquake commission. The aim was "to organize an earthquake service in the Austrian states". This was intended to document earthquakes - supported by seismographs and observers. When Stache returned from his vacation on May 17th, his far-sighted deputy Mojsisovics had done more than could be expected by founding the Earthquake Commission.
On October 2, 1906, Mojsisovics died in Mallnitz (Carinthia) in his villa (today: Bios National Park Center Mallnitz). He left a rich endowment that went to the academy. The money came from his income from the Trifail Coal Works Company (Slovenia), of which he was president from 1883 until the end of his life. His name remains unforgettable, not least thanks to the Mojsisovics Peak (2904 m) in the Ankogel Group (Carinthia) named after him. (Thomas Hofmann, June 13, 2024)