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The construction of the new U5 route has brought diversions in the area of Vienna City Hall since January 11th. One leads along Felderstrasse past the northern side of the town hall towards the ninth district. This should take four years. Enough time to devote yourself to Mr. Felder, the namesake of the alley (named in 1899).
Cajetan Felder, mayor of Vienna from 1868 to 1878, was born on September 19, 1814 in Vienna (Karlsgasse 6) and died at the age of 80 on November 30, 1894 at his country estate in Weidling (Lower Austria). The key details of his biography, with a focus on his political activities, can be found in the “Vienna History Wiki” and will not be explained in more detail here. The sentence "Felder, who owned a world-famous butterfly collection (located in London) and also evaluated it scientifically, was made a full member of the Academy of Science in recognition of this activity on May 27, 1870" opens up a lesser-known side of the man who was also an interpreter and fluent in a number of foreign languages.
Lawyer in his day job - internationally recognized entomologist
Felder's doctorate was that of Dr. iuris, he had acquired it in 1841 after completing his law studies at the University of Vienna, which he began in 1834. His office was at the posh address Kohlmarkt 7 in the inner city. On the other hand, he was a natural scientist - "explorer," proclaims the additional plaque to the official street name. If you follow the entry in Lehmann, that invaluable treasure trove, the full title of which is "Adolph Lehmann's general housing advertisement: along with a commercial and commercial address book for the imperial capital and residential city of Vienna and the surrounding area", you will find details. The Lehmann of 1870 shows that he was also a member of the Imperial Leopoldino-Carolinian Academy of Natural Sciences, a member and deputy president of the Patriotic Zoological-Botanical Society in Vienna, an honorary member of the Sociedad de Naturalistas Neogranadinos, a member of the Russian entomological society as well as the Dutch entomological association, and a correspondent for the k. k. Geological Reichsanstalt in Vienna and so on. His home address at that time was in the 8th district at Lenaugasse 19. The poet and two-time director of the Vienna Burgtheater, Anton Wildgans (1881–1932), later lived in that house, the Oskar-Werner-Hof.
Felder's early enthusiasm for nature
At the end of his life, he dictated his memoirs to his partner Rosa Rittner, the 12,000 (!) handwritten pages of which are in the Vienna City and State Archives. They formed the basis for the book “Memoirs of a Viennese Mayor” (1964) published by Felix Czeike. Sabine Gaal-Haszler, curator of the butterfly collection (Second Zoological Department) at the Natural History Museum, found the passage in it that was the deciding factor for the twelve-year-old orphan's early love of nature. "I often couldn't get enough of the wonderful colors and drawings for hours and the inclination that had germinated years ago now became a passion that made me forget everything else, since I was under no guidance at all. [...] I passed it on the way back and forth to and from school and instead of learning my lessons for the afternoon, butterflies were caught using a net kept in the hiding place." From then on, butterflies became a fixture in his life, first at high school in Seitenstetten, Lower Austria, and later during his years of traveling in Europe.
Fields, Frauenfeld and the Novara butterflies
Before Felder became mayor in 1868 as the successor to Andreas Zelinka (1802–1868), his great moment came in entomology, the study of butterflies. The circumnavigation of the world on the frigate Novara (1857–1859), on which the geologist Ferdinand von Hochstetter (1829–1884) and the zoologist Georg Ritter von Frauenfeld (1807–1873) also sailed, brought rich collections of scientific research objects, including butterflies, to Vienna. Frauenfeld coordinated the scientific processing of the material. He complied with the wish of Archduke Ferdinand Max (1832–1867), the emperor's brother and commander-in-chief of the navy, who wanted the results of the Novara expedition to be published. Felder had little to say appreciatively about Frauenfeld, even more than ten years after his death: "Georg Frauenfeld was originally a postal expeditor in Purkersdorf; in entomology, as in zoology and botany in general, he was self-taught and dilettante from scratch." These words are harsh, as Felder had a doctorate in law but was also self-taught when it came to butterflies. In November 1859, Frauenfeld invited him to work on the butterflies of the Novara expedition. When Frauenfeld showed him the boxes with the Novara butterflies, he made disparaging comments. "... and even a superficial perusal showed me that these provide no material for what I consider to be a halfway decent work. Highly distinguished by this derogatory statement of mine, Frauenfeld nevertheless left his boxes with me and the matter rested on itself."
Felder's scientific curiosity
The material from the Novara expedition may not have been that bad, because on April 9, 1862, Felder presented a "List of Macrolepidoptera of the Novara Expedition" at the meeting of the Zoological-Botanical Society. He was probably unable to control his scientific curiosity and began working secretly, otherwise he would not have finished the 24-page work cited above in 1862. In it he summarized: "The most valuable part of the entire collection are undoubtedly the species from the Nicobar Islands, since, apart from the one mentioned above, these are the first butterflies preserved from there."
On June 11, 1863, he received a letter from the Academy of Sciences. The content was - in essence - whether he, who had expressed a certain interest by taking over the collection, was also thinking about working on it, which would be the assumption. Felder, not a little self-confident, explained that he wanted to work here not only on the material collected from the Novara expedition, but also on the butterflies from his own collection. He also wanted to decide for himself the scope of the work and the number of panels, the production of which was expensive at the time. As a concession, he wanted to waive the author's fee. Felder's request was a no-go, but the learned gentlemen of the Academy of Sciences remained silent, Frauenfeld was outraged, and Felder - interpreting the silence as approval - went to work.
Novara work with 2,500 butterfly illustrations
Felder not only published butterflies that had been collected during the Novara trip, but also all those that he was able to get hold of or that he himself owned. These included some from the Amazon, Mexico and Cuba, as well as those from the Himalayas, the Malay Peninsula, northern China and Abyssinia. He was supported by his son Rudolph (1842–1871), who followed in his father's footsteps. Rudolph had studied law and devoted himself to natural sciences in his free time; were the focus – who’s surprised? – Butterflies.
The result of the Novara butterfly monograph was remarkable: two of the 18 large-format volumes with the scientific results of the Novara expedition have butterflies as their content. It is extremely elaborately designed with 140 panels and 2,500 butterfly illustrations. When Ferdinand von Hochstetter reported to the emperor in 1877 about the scientific results of the Novara trip, he presented the monarch with the two butterfly volumes. Emperor Franz Joseph included them in his private library, and Cajetan Felder was touched.
But what happened to Felder's butterfly collection, which he expanded throughout his life through purchases and exchanges? Shortly before his death, he sold his collection to Lionel Walter Rothschild (1868–1937), a scion of the Rothschild dynasty who owned one of the largest private zoological collections in the world. The main focus of collecting was birds and butterflies. Today his collection is in the Natural History Museum in London and is available for research. (Thomas Hofmann, January 22, 2021)