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Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. Franz Nopshaw was born May third, eighteen seventy seven,

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Speaker 1: or one hundred and forty eight years ago today, So

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Speaker 1: our episode on him is our Saturday classic. This originally

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Speaker 1: came out on April eighth, twenty ninety. Enjoy Welcome to

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Speaker 1: Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello,

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Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frye and I'm

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Speaker 1: Tracy V. Wilson, and today we are talking about a

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Speaker 1: fascinating gent whose story I stumbled across while looking for

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Speaker 1: something else entirely, As is often the case with me,

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Speaker 1: I'm on one track and then I go ooh, what's

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Speaker 1: that shiny object? And then I'm on a whole other track.

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Speaker 1: He's very complicated and complex to look at and kind

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Speaker 1: of figure out who he was. He's Baron Franz Nopcha,

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Speaker 1: who lived from eighteen seventy seven to nineteen thirty three.

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Speaker 1: He was Transylvanian. He identified dinosaurs, He inserted himself into

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Speaker 1: Albanian politics and became a scholar on Albania, and he

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Speaker 1: wrote volumes and volumes of books and papers, and he

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Speaker 1: was one of those people that led that sort of adventurous,

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Speaker 1: scholarly life that only an aristocrat of his time could

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Speaker 1: have managed. I mean bypassed most formal education, and so

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Speaker 1: he was funded in all of these efforts by his

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Speaker 1: family money. It wasn't as though he was doing it

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Speaker 1: to make a living. He was just living and pursuing

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Speaker 1: his interests. And he was definitely a man clearly who

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Speaker 1: had and took advantage of his privilege, although he did

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Speaker 1: ultimately lose it. I also have to give you a

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Speaker 1: heads up listeners that this episode contains gun violence and suicide.

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Speaker 1: I feel bad because I know I've had to put

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Speaker 1: similar warnings on several episodes lately. I swear I am

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Speaker 1: not doing that on purpose. It's always like the thing

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Speaker 1: I find out late in the game and they go,

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Speaker 1: oh man, but that is near the end. So if

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Speaker 1: you would like to listen to most of the show

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Speaker 1: but maybe not get that, you can tap out if

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Speaker 1: you just leave after our second ad break, because it

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Speaker 1: comes after that. So if you just missed that last segment,

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Speaker 1: you won't get any of that. So. He was born

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Speaker 1: on May third, eighteen seventy seven, in Sechelle, Transylvania, which

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Speaker 1: is now the city of Deva, Romania. At the time

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Speaker 1: this was all part of the Austro Hungarian Empire, and

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Speaker 1: as highly noted earlier, his family was wealthy. His mother, Matilde,

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Speaker 1: was from an aristocratic family. His father, Alexius, was the

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Speaker 1: vice director of the Hungarian Royal Opera. Franz was the

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Speaker 1: first of three children for the two of them, and

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Speaker 1: as children of a pretty wealthy family, he and his

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Speaker 1: siblings were well educated. They all spoke multiple languages, and

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Speaker 1: the family wasn't just wealthy, but also very well connected.

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Speaker 1: His uncle was well known in the court of Austria

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Speaker 1: and was a favorite of Empress Elizabeth, and that connection

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Speaker 1: was pretty helpful, maybe even pivotal, in Franz's life. And

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Speaker 1: when Franz was still a teenager, his sister brought him

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Speaker 1: something that would shift his life significantly because it sparked

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Speaker 1: what has often been called an obsession on Franz's part. Alona,

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Speaker 1: the sister, had found some sort of animal skull on

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Speaker 1: a riverbank while she had been out for a walk,

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Speaker 1: and she thought her older brother might help her figure

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Speaker 1: out what it was. There is an alternate version of

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Speaker 1: this story that you will sometimes read, which involves local

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Speaker 1: peasants bringing his sister Alona the skull, but regardless of

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Speaker 1: which of those is accurate, it did pass from her

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Speaker 1: to her brother and make him very curious. Indeed, that

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Speaker 1: was the same year that he was starting some studies

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Speaker 1: at the University of Vienna, so he decided to bring

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Speaker 1: it to one of his professors there, Edward Seus's, for identification.

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Speaker 1: They didn't get the help that he was looking for,

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Speaker 1: though Seuss initially seemed kind of intrigued by this whole thing,

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Speaker 1: but he lost interest and instead the professor told the

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Speaker 1: eighteen year old Franz that he needed to do his

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Speaker 1: own legwork to figure out what he had, and nopcha

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Speaker 1: did exactly that. Yeah, he returned to his family's castle

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Speaker 1: and he basically set up his own little research center there.

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Speaker 1: There were a lot of books already available to him

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Speaker 1: in the family library, and from those he gave himself

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Speaker 1: a foundational knowledge in geology, physiology, and anatomy. And then

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Speaker 1: he started reaching out to various scholars asking for more

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Speaker 1: research materials so that he could continue his self education.

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Speaker 1: And then he started his own amateur excavation site on

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Speaker 1: the riverbank where that skull had been found. So he

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Speaker 1: was an amateur, but he was doing meticulous work. He

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Speaker 1: found a number of other fossils as he was digging,

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Speaker 1: and he started applying the things that he knew about

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Speaker 1: animal physiology to the things that he found. He was

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Speaker 1: reconstructing the anatomy of what it turned out were seventy

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Speaker 1: million year old dinosaur bones from the late Mesozoic era.

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Speaker 1: For the next four years, he worked on figuring out

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Speaker 1: not only the anatomy of the species that he had

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Speaker 1: accidentally come across, but also its reproduction and its behavior.

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Speaker 1: And he did this once again by comparing things he

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Speaker 1: found like nests, to the nests of existing animals to

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Speaker 1: try to figure out where there were parallels and where

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Speaker 1: there were differences. And because of this work he's considered

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Speaker 1: one of the first paleophysiologists. In eighteen ninety nine, Franz

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Speaker 1: Nopcha was ready to show the scientific world what he

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Speaker 1: had been working on. So he went to the Austrian

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Speaker 1: Academy of Sciences, and, as a twenty two year old

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Speaker 1: with no formal scientific training beyond like his basically the

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Speaker 1: equivalent of high school, he offered up a lecture that

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Speaker 1: both wowed and insulted the scientific community. It seems that

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Speaker 1: the combination of youthful confidence and having worked outside of

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Speaker 1: academia on his project made Nopia completely comfortable telling well

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Speaker 1: known scientists that they were doing it wrong. He also

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Speaker 1: doled out some praise along the way, but in a

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Speaker 1: really condescending way. So again, he was twenty two, and

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Speaker 1: at one point he mentioned that the Belgian paleontologist Luis

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Speaker 1: Dolo was really doing quite well for his age. Age.

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Speaker 1: It was like, oh, you've contributed so much despite how

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Speaker 1: young you are, and this was a man in his forties.

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Speaker 1: So Dolo, we should also say, had been in charge

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Speaker 1: of the dig site where one of the most famous

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Speaker 1: Iguanadon finds in history took place. At this point, but

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Speaker 1: it was obvious to everyone present that you was brilliant.

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Speaker 1: He actually had come to some well founded conclusions. His

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Speaker 1: late Cretaceous dinosaur was called the Telmatosaurus transylvanicus. It was

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Speaker 1: the first of dozens of species that he would identify

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Speaker 1: over his career. That first dinosaur he identified was little,

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Speaker 1: at least in dinosaur terms. It was no bigger than

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Speaker 1: a crocodile, which I suppose if you came across it

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Speaker 1: in the wild, might seem like a big animal compared

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Speaker 1: to you who for a dinosaur, not so much. Several

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Speaker 1: other species he found in that same area were also

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Speaker 1: relatively small. A theory started to circulate in the scientific

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Speaker 1: community that Nopia had somehow found only juvenile specimens, but

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Speaker 1: he did not agree with that assessment, and he worked

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Speaker 1: really hard to disprove it. To that end, he started,

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Speaker 1: among other things, microscopic examinations of the bones that he

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Speaker 1: had and cross section cutting very thin slices from his

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Speaker 1: samples to do his work, and from these he was

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Speaker 1: able to determine that the dinosaur specimens he had been

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Speaker 1: working with all along had been adults. His hypothesis was

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Speaker 1: that the area near the river had actually been an

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Speaker 1: island during the Cretaceous period, and that the limited environment

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Speaker 1: had also limited the size of the animals that lived there,

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Speaker 1: and this was something that he called island theory. The

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Speaker 1: idea was that fewer resources meant that smaller animals were

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Speaker 1: able to survive, while larger ones couldn't sustain their size

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Speaker 1: with the food sources, so the larger animals would die off. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: if that sounds familiar, it is, and we'll talk about

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Speaker 1: that a little bit at the end of the episode.

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Speaker 1: But next up, we're going to talk about kind of

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Speaker 1: the next phase of Noacha's life, which takes an interesting turn.

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Speaker 1: But first we're going to hear from one of the

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Speaker 1: sponsors that keep stuff you missed in history class going.

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Speaker 1: In his early twenties, Franz Nopcho was making waves in paleontology,

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Speaker 1: but he was also shifting his scientific curiosity to other subjects.

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Speaker 1: During this time, he was an abandoning dinosaurs, but he

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Speaker 1: was just becoming interested in other things as well. Specifically,

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Speaker 1: he decided that he wanted to study the tribes of

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Speaker 1: the Albanian mountains, and this was a subject he learned

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Speaker 1: about from a Transylvanian count named Luis Draskovic that he

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Speaker 1: was close with, and the two men may have been

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Speaker 1: romantically involved, although that's not entirely clear. With money from

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Speaker 1: his uncle who was in the Austrian court, Franz mounted

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Speaker 1: his first expedition into the mountains of Albania in nineteen

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Speaker 1: oh three. Early on in this trip he did some

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Speaker 1: bird hunting and he shot several birds. This earned him

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Speaker 1: a reputation as a good shot, and that helped him

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Speaker 1: with some of his relationships with the locals. Although there

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Speaker 1: was a lot of danger in this undertaking, including some

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Speaker 1: attempts on his life. He and his uncle both kept

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Speaker 1: this trip a secret from Franz's parents. Yeah, eventually after

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Speaker 1: he came back from the trip, they came clean, but

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Speaker 1: they didn't don't really know that he was going off

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Speaker 1: to do this. And this kind of trip obviously is

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Speaker 1: something that he could not have done on his own

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Speaker 1: had he not been from a wealthy family with an

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Speaker 1: uncle willing to fund it. But that connection to his uncle,

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Speaker 1: and then his uncle's connection to the highest levels of

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Speaker 1: power in Austria Hungary at the time, actually shifted his

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Speaker 1: fortunes in a slightly unexpected way. Franz made numerous trips

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Speaker 1: into Albania after nineteen oh three, and the funding for

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Speaker 1: them eventually shifted from coming out of his uncle's pocket

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Speaker 1: to coming from the empire itself. Because Nopsha had been

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Speaker 1: recruited as a spy. The area where he was conducting

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Speaker 1: his research trips was right between the Ottoman Empire and

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Speaker 1: the Austro Hungarian Empire, so it made sense to make

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Speaker 1: his work, which involved mapping the area and studying the culture,

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Speaker 1: into an official but secret effort on the part of

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Speaker 1: the government. Yeah, this was obviously we'll talk about it

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Speaker 1: a little bit more. Kind of a time of destabilization

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Speaker 1: in that area, and so the Austria Hungary. He thought like, hey,

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Speaker 1: it would be really beneficial for us to know exactly

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Speaker 1: what's going on in this stretch of land. And he's

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Speaker 1: already making the map, so if we'd pay for these trips,

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Speaker 1: maybe he can just share his notes with us. So

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Speaker 1: that's what he did, and on one of these trips,

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Speaker 1: Franz met a man in a mountain village named Bajazid

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Speaker 1: Elma's Doda, and he hired him to be his personal secretary.

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Speaker 1: The two men were very close. They were together the

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Speaker 1: rest of their lives, and they probably were romantically involved.

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Speaker 1: Nopchin named one of his discoveries, an upper Cretaceous turtle

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Speaker 1: species that he discovered after Bajazid, and he once wrote

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Speaker 1: of Doda that quote, he was the only person who

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Speaker 1: has truly loved me. We should really not play down

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Speaker 1: the important role that Bajazid Doda made. He was a

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Speaker 1: scholar in his own right. And from the time they

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Speaker 1: met until they're far too early end, which we will

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Speaker 1: get to later, Nopcha and Doda traveled together and while

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Speaker 1: Bajazid was supporting the aristocrat's work. He was also photograph

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Speaker 1: and documenting the culture of the Muslim people of the

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Speaker 1: Upper break Of Valley. He wrote several books about the

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Speaker 1: Albanian people, and this was a time of great instability

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Speaker 1: in Albania. The Ottomans had ruled Albania off and on

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Speaker 1: since the fifteenth century, and Gota was capturing in photographs

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Speaker 1: and in words, the isolation that Albanians felt as they

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Speaker 1: were cut off from the rest of the world in

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Speaker 1: this whole geo political maneuvering of the Ottoman Empire. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you can find some of his photographs online and they're

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Speaker 1: really quite striking. I mean, one, when you consider where

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Speaker 1: photography was at at the time, they're already really really

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Speaker 1: interesting to look at. But he does a really nice

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Speaker 1: job of just like capturing these moments in the lives

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Speaker 1: of these people that are just trying to figure out

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Speaker 1: their place in a world that is shifting around them

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Speaker 1: very rapidly, but that they have very little say in.

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Speaker 1: And they're quite beautiful, so I recommend them. During a

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Speaker 1: trip in nineteen oh seven, Franz and Bajazid found themselves

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Speaker 1: in a rather precarious situation. They had been sent to

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Speaker 1: the home of a man named Mustaf Alita in the

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Speaker 1: mountains of Debra on the advice of an abbot that

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Speaker 1: they had met. Mustaf Alita was a bandit of some renown,

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Speaker 1: described by Nopucha in his memoir as quote one of

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Speaker 1: the most dastardly robbers of Debra in all of Turkey

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Speaker 1: at the time. And despite that reputation, the two men

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Speaker 1: did indeed set out to meet him at his home.

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Speaker 1: They were welcomed and they stayed for several days as guests,

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Speaker 1: and at first they were sort of delayed from leaving

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Speaker 1: because of bad weather, but then as the weather cleared up,

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Speaker 1: mustaf Alita kept coming up with other reasons to keep

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Speaker 1: them there. He finally told them that they were his prisoners.

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Speaker 1: He was demanding ten thousand Turkish pounds as a ransom

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Speaker 1: for their return, and another ten thousand if any of

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Speaker 1: the dwellings of his people were damaged in any kind

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Speaker 1: of a rescue attempt. At one point, Mustaf Alita attempted

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Speaker 1: to bribe Bajazid to assist him in this whole plan

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Speaker 1: by offering him two thousand pounds to betray his friend

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Speaker 1: and Bajazid turned this down. Yeah, he basically went back

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Speaker 1: until Franza You'll never guess what he just did, told

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Speaker 1: him the whole story and there was no there were

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Speaker 1: no secrets between them. Then Mustaf Alita and the Baron,

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Speaker 1: Franz Nopcha discussed the situation and Nopcha kind of made

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Speaker 1: a deal and he was given five days to decide

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Speaker 1: who they should contact to get the ransom money. During

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Speaker 1: that time, he did manage to get a message out

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Speaker 1: to the abbot who had sent him to the robber,

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Speaker 1: and he told the abbot to send quote five hundred

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Speaker 1: armed men or opium and twenty men. Nopia also discussed

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Speaker 1: the matter with one of Mustaf Alita's attendants, a man

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Speaker 1: named Dalip, who was displeased that their guests were being betrayed.

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Speaker 1: So he thought Dahlip might be on his side, and

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Speaker 1: Dalip also wanted to work this situation to his own

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Speaker 1: advantage and benefit. According to Nopta's memoirs, he and Alip

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Speaker 1: discussed three possible ways this whole situation could go. Quote

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Speaker 1: One was that Mustaf Alita would demand his ten thousand

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Speaker 1: pounds my Albanian friends and Turkish troops would arrive, Lita's

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Speaker 1: family lineage would be dishonored and every one would do massacred.

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Speaker 1: The second possibility was that Mustaf Aalita would demand a

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Speaker 1: bimbashlik position for my release. In this case, I would

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Speaker 1: try to calm down my friends and would endeavor to

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Speaker 1: keep Turkish troops out of Calis and negotiate with the authorities.

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Speaker 1: The end result in this event was unclear. The third

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Speaker 1: variant was that Mustaf Alita would take me to Priserin

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Speaker 1: and turn me in as a spy. He would thus

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Speaker 1: be amnestied by the government, and I would support his

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Speaker 1: request for bemba shlik. Yeah. Also for clarity, that first

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Speaker 1: option where everyone would be massacred, he was including himself

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Speaker 1: and Bajazide in it. He was like, if this goes down,

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Speaker 1: we're all gonna die. But maybe we can work out

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Speaker 1: one of these other options. So for a little bit

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Speaker 1: of additional clarity, A bimba shlik is a military position

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Speaker 1: roughly akin to that of an army major. Dalip agreed

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Speaker 1: to take these three possible scenarios to Mustaf Alita to consider,

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Speaker 1: and even as they negotiated after this with Mustaf Alita

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Speaker 1: and his men, Franz Nopcha and Bajaz Doda were making

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Speaker 1: backup plans in case the talks broke down, including hiding

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Speaker 1: a razor under a rug with the intention of killing

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Speaker 1: a guard and escaping out the window using sheets and

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Speaker 1: carpets to shim me down from the high floor. So

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Speaker 1: upon hearing these three options at first, Mustapha Alita told

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Speaker 1: his captives that he had captured them basically as a

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Speaker 1: joke to see if they were weak, and he said

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Speaker 1: that they could go free. But Nopzha thought that this

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Speaker 1: was a trap and he did not accept the offer.

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Speaker 1: The baron once again offered to campaign for the robber

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Speaker 1: to get his military position if he would turn him

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Speaker 1: over to the Turkish government as a spy, and Mustafhealita agreed.

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Speaker 1: So as they rode into the city of Prizren, Mustapha

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Speaker 1: Alita claimed that he had found Nopcha in disguise as

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Speaker 1: a local man along the trail and had captured this

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Speaker 1: spy to bring him to the proper authorities. Nopcha was

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Speaker 1: put into a prison cell, which he had been counting

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Speaker 1: on to separate him from his captor, and meanwhile Bajazid

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Speaker 1: was also taken to Pritzrin, but was released per the

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Speaker 1: terms of their agree and he was able to get

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Speaker 1: a note written by Nocha to the consulate there, and

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Speaker 1: then the consulate sent help. Before long this whole affair

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Speaker 1: was over. Mustaf Alita realized that he had been outsmarted

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Speaker 1: and headed back to his own territory. Bashizin's father had

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Speaker 1: gotten word of the kidnapping and had shown up with

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Speaker 1: a small army of men planning to kill Mustaf Alita,

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Speaker 1: but his son and Nopcha convinced him that he and

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Speaker 1: his men could stand down. During their travels, Franz became

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Speaker 1: well known in the various areas they visited. He built

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00:16:29,280 --> 00:16:32,440
Speaker 1: up connections and friendships there, and he became fluent in

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Speaker 1: several different Albanian dialects. He became so invested in the

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Speaker 1: fate of Albania that he supported the idea of a

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Speaker 1: rebellion against the young Turks, and he actually saw himself

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Speaker 1: as the Albanian's potential leader in such a war effort.

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Speaker 1: There is obviously a little bit of a white savior

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Speaker 1: complex and play there, but he also felt he knew

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Speaker 1: more about warfare and the people they might be meeting

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Speaker 1: than anybody else. In nineteen thirteen, the Albanian Congress of

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Speaker 1: Trieste was organized. From February twenty seventh to March sixth

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Speaker 1: delegates from the various tribes of Albania came to discuss

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Speaker 1: their future as an independent nation and to petition the

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Speaker 1: great powers to recognize their status. This event and the

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Speaker 1: politics surrounding it could be its whole own subject, but

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Speaker 1: as it relates to Baron Franz Nopshka, the great powers

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Speaker 1: of the time, which were Austria, Hungary, the United Kingdom, France, Germany,

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Speaker 1: Russia and Italy, all had in mind that they would

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Speaker 1: install a European as king, and Nopcha suggested himself for

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Speaker 1: the job, feeling that he knew more about the area

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Speaker 1: and its people than any other aristocrat that might be

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Speaker 1: installed in a position of leadership, and indeed he really

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Speaker 1: was recognized as the most knowledgeable candidate, both by people

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Speaker 1: in Albania and by the rest of the Assembly. But instead,

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Speaker 1: Germany's Prince Wilhelm of Vied was established as monarch, and

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Speaker 1: at that point Nopia declared that his Albania was dead.

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Speaker 1: After this disappointment, Nopsha faced a whole different hurdle and

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Speaker 1: that was the loss of his family fortune. During World

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Speaker 1: War One, he had resumed his spy work for Austria

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Speaker 1: Hungary and he had run guns to northern Albanian tribes.

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Speaker 1: He had even headed up in an Albanian division, but

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Speaker 1: he was often really frustrated at how the government was

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Speaker 1: handling things like occupation of Albanian territories. The Austro Hungarian

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Speaker 1: Empire collapsed in nineteen eighteen and Nopha's homeland became part

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Speaker 1: of Romania. With that point, his family estate was no

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Speaker 1: longer his property. And we're going to talk about the

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Speaker 1: last part of Franz Nopcha's life in a moment, but

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Speaker 1: first we will take another quick sponsor break. Hey, so

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Speaker 1: as we come back, I just want to remind you

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Speaker 1: that if you heeded our warning at the top of

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Speaker 1: the episode about some violence that's coming up and you

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Speaker 1: do not wish to hear it, this would be a

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Speaker 1: good time to check out and we bid you adieu.

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Speaker 1: But getting back to Franz Nopcha. While paleontology was becoming

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Speaker 1: a more established science at this point, as a self

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Speaker 1: taught scientist with a reputation for being kind of eccentric

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00:19:04,480 --> 00:19:07,399
Speaker 1: and even rude, it was pretty difficult for the baron,

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Speaker 1: who at this point, you remember, had lost his fortune,

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Speaker 1: to make connections into the field that he had in

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Speaker 1: some ways helped to pioneer. In April nineteen twenty five,

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Speaker 1: Noptah was offered the position of director at the Royal

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Speaker 1: Hungarian Institute of Geology. He worked there until November nineteen

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Speaker 1: twenty eight. He reorganized the institute, which was a move

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Speaker 1: that was seen as a success, but he was never

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Speaker 1: really happy there and his health was suffering. At one

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Speaker 1: point he was in bed for an entire year. He

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Speaker 1: wrote extensively in his three years with the institute, though

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00:19:38,240 --> 00:19:42,720
Speaker 1: he covered paleontology, geography, and ethnology along with other subjects.

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Speaker 1: In total, he wrote almost two hundred different works, and

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Speaker 1: roughly a quarter of them were about Albania and its people.

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Speaker 1: And Nopcha's health continued to decline. In nineteen twenty eight,

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Speaker 1: he gave the opening remarks at a Paleontological Society conference

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Speaker 1: that he had invited to come to Budapest, but he

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Speaker 1: was so weak at that point that he had to

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Speaker 1: give his lecture from a wheelchair, and in his mind

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Speaker 1: he believed that his career was basically over. And that

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00:20:07,720 --> 00:20:10,679
Speaker 1: his lecture would likely be his last work. It was not.

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Speaker 1: He continued to write a great deal in the next

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Speaker 1: several years, but he resigned from his job just a

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Speaker 1: few months later, and he and Bajazid first took a

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Speaker 1: motorcycle tour of Europe, starting in Italy, until they ran

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Speaker 1: out of money, and then they moved to Vienna. On

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Speaker 1: April twenty sixth, nineteen thirty three, Franz Nopsha was living

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Speaker 1: in an apartment in Vienna with Bajazid Doda, and they

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Speaker 1: had been living there together since he retired from his

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Speaker 1: job at the Geological Institute, and that day, while Bajazid

378
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Speaker 1: was asleep, Nopsha sent the housekeeper away on an errand

379
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Speaker 1: and then he shot his sleeping companion and then himself,

380
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Speaker 1: killing both of them and Nopcha. This was clearly something

381
00:20:49,840 --> 00:20:51,760
Speaker 1: he had been planning to do, because he left behind

382
00:20:52,200 --> 00:20:55,959
Speaker 1: a lot of envelopes for people like lawyers and whatnot.

383
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Speaker 1: But he also left behind a note for the police

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Speaker 1: and it read quote, the motive for my suicide is

385
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Speaker 1: a nervous breakdown. The reason that I shot my longtime

386
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Speaker 1: friend and secretary, mister Bajazid Elma's Doda in his sleep,

387
00:21:08,040 --> 00:21:10,639
Speaker 1: without his suspecting is that I do not wish to

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Speaker 1: leave him behind, sick in misery and without a penny,

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Speaker 1: because he would have suffered too much. I wish to

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Speaker 1: be cremated. This entire incident was described in detail in

391
00:21:21,240 --> 00:21:24,000
Speaker 1: Vienna's new free Press, all the way down to autopsy

392
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Speaker 1: details and Nopsha's note, and it ran under the unfortunate

393
00:21:28,000 --> 00:21:32,400
Speaker 1: and sensational headline quote bloody drama. In the Singerstrass scholar

394
00:21:32,440 --> 00:21:36,040
Speaker 1: commits murder and suicide. Quickly, a lot of the scholarly

395
00:21:36,119 --> 00:21:39,600
Speaker 1: work that Nopsha and Doda had done was eclipsed by

396
00:21:39,600 --> 00:21:42,280
Speaker 1: the dramatic story of their death, and the two men

397
00:21:42,320 --> 00:21:45,600
Speaker 1: were actually buried across the street from one another. Doda

398
00:21:45,760 --> 00:21:49,720
Speaker 1: was buried in a Muslim section of one of Vienna's cemeteries,

399
00:21:49,840 --> 00:21:53,320
Speaker 1: and Nopcha's cremated remains were interred in a vault, and

400
00:21:53,359 --> 00:21:55,840
Speaker 1: their burials were coordinated so that the two were placed

401
00:21:55,880 --> 00:21:59,000
Speaker 1: in their final resting places at exactly the same time.

402
00:21:59,680 --> 00:22:02,520
Speaker 1: While Nopia had left a list of his unpublished work

403
00:22:02,520 --> 00:22:06,480
Speaker 1: with a colleague named Norbert Jokel, along with instructions about

404
00:22:06,480 --> 00:22:09,480
Speaker 1: who to contact to have them published, that publication didn't

405
00:22:09,520 --> 00:22:14,119
Speaker 1: happen initially. There were financial issues and Jokil held onto

406
00:22:14,160 --> 00:22:16,120
Speaker 1: the works but was killed by Nazis in the early

407
00:22:16,160 --> 00:22:21,359
Speaker 1: nineteen forties. The remaining manuscripts are in the Austrian National Library,

408
00:22:21,520 --> 00:22:24,240
Speaker 1: but some of what's believed to have been his most

409
00:22:24,280 --> 00:22:27,640
Speaker 1: comprehensive writing on Albania has been lost. Yeah, a lot

410
00:22:27,640 --> 00:22:32,080
Speaker 1: of his fossil work was actually retained because before his

411
00:22:32,200 --> 00:22:34,119
Speaker 1: death he had sold a lot of it to I

412
00:22:34,160 --> 00:22:37,320
Speaker 1: think the British Museum, so it's still intact most of

413
00:22:37,359 --> 00:22:39,439
Speaker 1: that research. But a lot of his Albanian work that

414
00:22:39,440 --> 00:22:42,280
Speaker 1: people think is probably some of the most important, is

415
00:22:42,840 --> 00:22:45,199
Speaker 1: completely mia. We have no idea where it ended up.

416
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Speaker 1: Throughout his life, the passionate and obsessive Franz Nopcha had

417
00:22:50,280 --> 00:22:52,760
Speaker 1: dealt with health issues which are a little bit nebulous

418
00:22:52,840 --> 00:22:55,600
Speaker 1: in terms of what we actually know about them. He

419
00:22:55,760 --> 00:22:58,080
Speaker 1: was prolific in his work, but his efforts were often

420
00:22:58,119 --> 00:23:01,320
Speaker 1: interrupted throughout his life by what he called shattered nerves,

421
00:23:01,880 --> 00:23:04,480
Speaker 1: and his mother told people at various times, even when

422
00:23:04,480 --> 00:23:06,320
Speaker 1: he was an adult, like she would kind of write

423
00:23:06,359 --> 00:23:09,000
Speaker 1: notes to excuse him from things, saying that he had

424
00:23:09,000 --> 00:23:12,120
Speaker 1: a recurring illness but she never really gave details about them.

425
00:23:12,640 --> 00:23:17,080
Speaker 1: Even in his own memoirs, he doesn't really detail his

426
00:23:17,119 --> 00:23:19,560
Speaker 1: personal thoughts or feelings. It's all kind of like, here

427
00:23:19,560 --> 00:23:21,880
Speaker 1: are the things that happened, but he doesn't really discuss

428
00:23:22,320 --> 00:23:26,480
Speaker 1: the personal aspects of those experiences at all. That's a consequence.

429
00:23:26,520 --> 00:23:29,000
Speaker 1: It's still something of a struggle for historians to really

430
00:23:29,000 --> 00:23:31,119
Speaker 1: get a sense of what Nosha was like as a person.

431
00:23:31,760 --> 00:23:34,840
Speaker 1: Even his colleagues at the time described him as enigmatic

432
00:23:34,880 --> 00:23:39,080
Speaker 1: and hard to read. He was really passionate about his work,

433
00:23:39,119 --> 00:23:41,960
Speaker 1: and he could be generous with his research. He didn't

434
00:23:42,000 --> 00:23:44,920
Speaker 1: seem like he was seeking fame, but he did think

435
00:23:44,960 --> 00:23:47,480
Speaker 1: he was way ahead of most other people, and he

436
00:23:47,600 --> 00:23:50,359
Speaker 1: was prone to mood swings, which could make him very

437
00:23:50,400 --> 00:23:53,040
Speaker 1: unkind to the people around him. Yeah, there have been

438
00:23:53,080 --> 00:23:55,760
Speaker 1: a lot of theories put forth about what exactly was

439
00:23:56,920 --> 00:23:59,359
Speaker 1: his problem in terms of mental health, but those are

440
00:23:59,400 --> 00:24:01,880
Speaker 1: always tricky, as we've discussed many times on the show,

441
00:24:02,040 --> 00:24:05,240
Speaker 1: like to diagnose somebody post mortem is a whole messy thing,

442
00:24:05,280 --> 00:24:10,000
Speaker 1: particularly for someone who's just doing a casual assessment from

443
00:24:10,040 --> 00:24:13,920
Speaker 1: a historical standpoint rather than someone who's actually trained in psychology.

444
00:24:14,920 --> 00:24:17,520
Speaker 1: But in a paper on Nopsch's work, written by David B.

445
00:24:17,640 --> 00:24:20,840
Speaker 1: Weishample and Wolf ernst Rife, The writers make a really

446
00:24:20,920 --> 00:24:23,399
Speaker 1: nice point about how privilege and a lack of formal

447
00:24:23,520 --> 00:24:27,320
Speaker 1: education kind of robbed Nopcha of his ability to turn

448
00:24:27,359 --> 00:24:30,120
Speaker 1: a critical eye to his own work and perhaps consequently

449
00:24:30,200 --> 00:24:33,480
Speaker 1: learn to moderate his behavior. They wrote, quote, yet to

450
00:24:33,600 --> 00:24:37,360
Speaker 1: characterize Nopcha as arrogant is to overlook the obvious problem

451
00:24:37,440 --> 00:24:40,840
Speaker 1: of combining in one person a high level of intelligence

452
00:24:40,880 --> 00:24:45,520
Speaker 1: and creativity not often tempered with the ability of self criticism.

453
00:24:46,240 --> 00:24:51,959
Speaker 1: Nopcha's studies in tectonic geology, evolutionary biology, paleo biogeography, and

454
00:24:52,000 --> 00:24:56,959
Speaker 1: sexual dimorphism prove his ability to intelligently discover problems and

455
00:24:57,040 --> 00:25:01,560
Speaker 1: solve them in remarkable ways. Ability to criticize his own

456
00:25:01,560 --> 00:25:05,399
Speaker 1: work acted both against and for Nopia. Against because of

457
00:25:05,440 --> 00:25:09,439
Speaker 1: outlandish and easily falsified ideas which he presented on paper,

458
00:25:09,920 --> 00:25:13,520
Speaker 1: and four because he excelled at assembling disparate ideas into

459
00:25:13,600 --> 00:25:16,680
Speaker 1: new frameworks. A lot of his ideas that were met

460
00:25:16,680 --> 00:25:19,240
Speaker 1: with skepticism while he was living have come to be

461
00:25:19,280 --> 00:25:22,719
Speaker 1: pretty widely accepted in the year since his death. For example,

462
00:25:23,040 --> 00:25:25,760
Speaker 1: his idea that the area known as Hotzig had been

463
00:25:25,760 --> 00:25:28,960
Speaker 1: an island during the Cretaceous period, has been supported by

464
00:25:29,000 --> 00:25:33,360
Speaker 1: additional research over the years. His island theory about limited

465
00:25:33,400 --> 00:25:36,479
Speaker 1: resources causing dwarfism and species is now known as the

466
00:25:36,520 --> 00:25:40,440
Speaker 1: Island Rule, although it's credited in its more formally detailed

467
00:25:40,480 --> 00:25:43,960
Speaker 1: form is Foster's Rule, which is named for a biologist J.

468
00:25:44,160 --> 00:25:47,040
Speaker 1: Bristol Foster, who wrote a paper establishing the idea in

469
00:25:47,119 --> 00:25:50,679
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four. And Sachel Castle, the family home of

470
00:25:50,720 --> 00:25:54,359
Speaker 1: Franz Nopsha, has fallen into ruin and it has, through

471
00:25:54,440 --> 00:25:57,880
Speaker 1: historical conservation efforts, been placed on a list of cultural

472
00:25:57,920 --> 00:26:01,080
Speaker 1: Heritage sites in Romania with the intent that the government

473
00:26:01,119 --> 00:26:05,000
Speaker 1: will provide financial support for restoration and upkeep, although those

474
00:26:05,040 --> 00:26:07,480
Speaker 1: funds have actually been slow to materialize, so it is

475
00:26:07,520 --> 00:26:10,439
Speaker 1: still in a pretty sad state of disrepair at this

476
00:26:10,520 --> 00:26:10,840
Speaker 1: point