Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. Franz Nopshaw was born May third, eighteen seventy seven,
Speaker 1: or one hundred and forty eight years ago today, So
Speaker 1: our episode on him is our Saturday classic. This originally
Speaker 1: came out on April eighth, twenty ninety. Enjoy Welcome to
Speaker 1: Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frye and I'm
Speaker 1: Tracy V. Wilson, and today we are talking about a
Speaker 1: fascinating gent whose story I stumbled across while looking for
Speaker 1: something else entirely, As is often the case with me,
Speaker 1: I'm on one track and then I go ooh, what's
Speaker 1: that shiny object? And then I'm on a whole other track.
Speaker 1: He's very complicated and complex to look at and kind
Speaker 1: of figure out who he was. He's Baron Franz Nopcha,
Speaker 1: who lived from eighteen seventy seven to nineteen thirty three.
Speaker 1: He was Transylvanian. He identified dinosaurs, He inserted himself into
Speaker 1: Albanian politics and became a scholar on Albania, and he
Speaker 1: wrote volumes and volumes of books and papers, and he
Speaker 1: was one of those people that led that sort of adventurous,
Speaker 1: scholarly life that only an aristocrat of his time could
Speaker 1: have managed. I mean bypassed most formal education, and so
Speaker 1: he was funded in all of these efforts by his
Speaker 1: family money. It wasn't as though he was doing it
Speaker 1: to make a living. He was just living and pursuing
Speaker 1: his interests. And he was definitely a man clearly who
Speaker 1: had and took advantage of his privilege, although he did
Speaker 1: ultimately lose it. I also have to give you a
Speaker 1: heads up listeners that this episode contains gun violence and suicide.
Speaker 1: I feel bad because I know I've had to put
Speaker 1: similar warnings on several episodes lately. I swear I am
Speaker 1: not doing that on purpose. It's always like the thing
Speaker 1: I find out late in the game and they go,
Speaker 1: oh man, but that is near the end. So if
Speaker 1: you would like to listen to most of the show
Speaker 1: but maybe not get that, you can tap out if
Speaker 1: you just leave after our second ad break, because it
Speaker 1: comes after that. So if you just missed that last segment,
Speaker 1: you won't get any of that. So. He was born
Speaker 1: on May third, eighteen seventy seven, in Sechelle, Transylvania, which
Speaker 1: is now the city of Deva, Romania. At the time
Speaker 1: this was all part of the Austro Hungarian Empire, and
Speaker 1: as highly noted earlier, his family was wealthy. His mother, Matilde,
Speaker 1: was from an aristocratic family. His father, Alexius, was the
Speaker 1: vice director of the Hungarian Royal Opera. Franz was the
Speaker 1: first of three children for the two of them, and
Speaker 1: as children of a pretty wealthy family, he and his
Speaker 1: siblings were well educated. They all spoke multiple languages, and
Speaker 1: the family wasn't just wealthy, but also very well connected.
Speaker 1: His uncle was well known in the court of Austria
Speaker 1: and was a favorite of Empress Elizabeth, and that connection
Speaker 1: was pretty helpful, maybe even pivotal, in Franz's life. And
Speaker 1: when Franz was still a teenager, his sister brought him
Speaker 1: something that would shift his life significantly because it sparked
Speaker 1: what has often been called an obsession on Franz's part. Alona,
Speaker 1: the sister, had found some sort of animal skull on
Speaker 1: a riverbank while she had been out for a walk,
Speaker 1: and she thought her older brother might help her figure
Speaker 1: out what it was. There is an alternate version of
Speaker 1: this story that you will sometimes read, which involves local
Speaker 1: peasants bringing his sister Alona the skull, but regardless of
Speaker 1: which of those is accurate, it did pass from her
Speaker 1: to her brother and make him very curious. Indeed, that
Speaker 1: was the same year that he was starting some studies
Speaker 1: at the University of Vienna, so he decided to bring
Speaker 1: it to one of his professors there, Edward Seus's, for identification.
Speaker 1: They didn't get the help that he was looking for,
Speaker 1: though Seuss initially seemed kind of intrigued by this whole thing,
Speaker 1: but he lost interest and instead the professor told the
Speaker 1: eighteen year old Franz that he needed to do his
Speaker 1: own legwork to figure out what he had, and nopcha
Speaker 1: did exactly that. Yeah, he returned to his family's castle
Speaker 1: and he basically set up his own little research center there.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of books already available to him
Speaker 1: in the family library, and from those he gave himself
Speaker 1: a foundational knowledge in geology, physiology, and anatomy. And then
Speaker 1: he started reaching out to various scholars asking for more
Speaker 1: research materials so that he could continue his self education.
Speaker 1: And then he started his own amateur excavation site on
Speaker 1: the riverbank where that skull had been found. So he
Speaker 1: was an amateur, but he was doing meticulous work. He
Speaker 1: found a number of other fossils as he was digging,
Speaker 1: and he started applying the things that he knew about
Speaker 1: animal physiology to the things that he found. He was
Speaker 1: reconstructing the anatomy of what it turned out were seventy
Speaker 1: million year old dinosaur bones from the late Mesozoic era.
Speaker 1: For the next four years, he worked on figuring out
Speaker 1: not only the anatomy of the species that he had
Speaker 1: accidentally come across, but also its reproduction and its behavior.
Speaker 1: And he did this once again by comparing things he
Speaker 1: found like nests, to the nests of existing animals to
Speaker 1: try to figure out where there were parallels and where
Speaker 1: there were differences. And because of this work he's considered
Speaker 1: one of the first paleophysiologists. In eighteen ninety nine, Franz
Speaker 1: Nopcha was ready to show the scientific world what he
Speaker 1: had been working on. So he went to the Austrian
Speaker 1: Academy of Sciences, and, as a twenty two year old
Speaker 1: with no formal scientific training beyond like his basically the
Speaker 1: equivalent of high school, he offered up a lecture that
Speaker 1: both wowed and insulted the scientific community. It seems that
Speaker 1: the combination of youthful confidence and having worked outside of
Speaker 1: academia on his project made Nopia completely comfortable telling well
Speaker 1: known scientists that they were doing it wrong. He also
Speaker 1: doled out some praise along the way, but in a
Speaker 1: really condescending way. So again, he was twenty two, and
Speaker 1: at one point he mentioned that the Belgian paleontologist Luis
Speaker 1: Dolo was really doing quite well for his age. Age.
Speaker 1: It was like, oh, you've contributed so much despite how
Speaker 1: young you are, and this was a man in his forties.
Speaker 1: So Dolo, we should also say, had been in charge
Speaker 1: of the dig site where one of the most famous
Speaker 1: Iguanadon finds in history took place. At this point, but
Speaker 1: it was obvious to everyone present that you was brilliant.
Speaker 1: He actually had come to some well founded conclusions. His
Speaker 1: late Cretaceous dinosaur was called the Telmatosaurus transylvanicus. It was
Speaker 1: the first of dozens of species that he would identify
Speaker 1: over his career. That first dinosaur he identified was little,
Speaker 1: at least in dinosaur terms. It was no bigger than
Speaker 1: a crocodile, which I suppose if you came across it
Speaker 1: in the wild, might seem like a big animal compared
Speaker 1: to you who for a dinosaur, not so much. Several
Speaker 1: other species he found in that same area were also
Speaker 1: relatively small. A theory started to circulate in the scientific
Speaker 1: community that Nopia had somehow found only juvenile specimens, but
Speaker 1: he did not agree with that assessment, and he worked
Speaker 1: really hard to disprove it. To that end, he started,
Speaker 1: among other things, microscopic examinations of the bones that he
Speaker 1: had and cross section cutting very thin slices from his
Speaker 1: samples to do his work, and from these he was
Speaker 1: able to determine that the dinosaur specimens he had been
Speaker 1: working with all along had been adults. His hypothesis was
Speaker 1: that the area near the river had actually been an
Speaker 1: island during the Cretaceous period, and that the limited environment
Speaker 1: had also limited the size of the animals that lived there,
Speaker 1: and this was something that he called island theory. The
Speaker 1: idea was that fewer resources meant that smaller animals were
Speaker 1: able to survive, while larger ones couldn't sustain their size
Speaker 1: with the food sources, so the larger animals would die off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if that sounds familiar, it is, and we'll talk about
Speaker 1: that a little bit at the end of the episode.
Speaker 1: But next up, we're going to talk about kind of
Speaker 1: the next phase of Noacha's life, which takes an interesting turn.
Speaker 1: But first we're going to hear from one of the
Speaker 1: sponsors that keep stuff you missed in history class going.
Speaker 1: In his early twenties, Franz Nopcho was making waves in paleontology,
Speaker 1: but he was also shifting his scientific curiosity to other subjects.
Speaker 1: During this time, he was an abandoning dinosaurs, but he
Speaker 1: was just becoming interested in other things as well. Specifically,
Speaker 1: he decided that he wanted to study the tribes of
Speaker 1: the Albanian mountains, and this was a subject he learned
Speaker 1: about from a Transylvanian count named Luis Draskovic that he
Speaker 1: was close with, and the two men may have been
Speaker 1: romantically involved, although that's not entirely clear. With money from
Speaker 1: his uncle who was in the Austrian court, Franz mounted
Speaker 1: his first expedition into the mountains of Albania in nineteen
Speaker 1: oh three. Early on in this trip he did some
Speaker 1: bird hunting and he shot several birds. This earned him
Speaker 1: a reputation as a good shot, and that helped him
Speaker 1: with some of his relationships with the locals. Although there
Speaker 1: was a lot of danger in this undertaking, including some
Speaker 1: attempts on his life. He and his uncle both kept
Speaker 1: this trip a secret from Franz's parents. Yeah, eventually after
Speaker 1: he came back from the trip, they came clean, but
Speaker 1: they didn't don't really know that he was going off
Speaker 1: to do this. And this kind of trip obviously is
Speaker 1: something that he could not have done on his own
Speaker 1: had he not been from a wealthy family with an
Speaker 1: uncle willing to fund it. But that connection to his uncle,
Speaker 1: and then his uncle's connection to the highest levels of
Speaker 1: power in Austria Hungary at the time, actually shifted his
Speaker 1: fortunes in a slightly unexpected way. Franz made numerous trips
Speaker 1: into Albania after nineteen oh three, and the funding for
Speaker 1: them eventually shifted from coming out of his uncle's pocket
Speaker 1: to coming from the empire itself. Because Nopsha had been
Speaker 1: recruited as a spy. The area where he was conducting
Speaker 1: his research trips was right between the Ottoman Empire and
Speaker 1: the Austro Hungarian Empire, so it made sense to make
Speaker 1: his work, which involved mapping the area and studying the culture,
Speaker 1: into an official but secret effort on the part of
Speaker 1: the government. Yeah, this was obviously we'll talk about it
Speaker 1: a little bit more. Kind of a time of destabilization
Speaker 1: in that area, and so the Austria Hungary. He thought like, hey,
Speaker 1: it would be really beneficial for us to know exactly
Speaker 1: what's going on in this stretch of land. And he's
Speaker 1: already making the map, so if we'd pay for these trips,
Speaker 1: maybe he can just share his notes with us. So
Speaker 1: that's what he did, and on one of these trips,
Speaker 1: Franz met a man in a mountain village named Bajazid
Speaker 1: Elma's Doda, and he hired him to be his personal secretary.
Speaker 1: The two men were very close. They were together the
Speaker 1: rest of their lives, and they probably were romantically involved.
Speaker 1: Nopchin named one of his discoveries, an upper Cretaceous turtle
Speaker 1: species that he discovered after Bajazid, and he once wrote
Speaker 1: of Doda that quote, he was the only person who
Speaker 1: has truly loved me. We should really not play down
Speaker 1: the important role that Bajazid Doda made. He was a
Speaker 1: scholar in his own right. And from the time they
Speaker 1: met until they're far too early end, which we will
Speaker 1: get to later, Nopcha and Doda traveled together and while
Speaker 1: Bajazid was supporting the aristocrat's work. He was also photograph
Speaker 1: and documenting the culture of the Muslim people of the
Speaker 1: Upper break Of Valley. He wrote several books about the
Speaker 1: Albanian people, and this was a time of great instability
Speaker 1: in Albania. The Ottomans had ruled Albania off and on
Speaker 1: since the fifteenth century, and Gota was capturing in photographs
Speaker 1: and in words, the isolation that Albanians felt as they
Speaker 1: were cut off from the rest of the world in
Speaker 1: this whole geo political maneuvering of the Ottoman Empire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can find some of his photographs online and they're
Speaker 1: really quite striking. I mean, one, when you consider where
Speaker 1: photography was at at the time, they're already really really
Speaker 1: interesting to look at. But he does a really nice
Speaker 1: job of just like capturing these moments in the lives
Speaker 1: of these people that are just trying to figure out
Speaker 1: their place in a world that is shifting around them
Speaker 1: very rapidly, but that they have very little say in.
Speaker 1: And they're quite beautiful, so I recommend them. During a
Speaker 1: trip in nineteen oh seven, Franz and Bajazid found themselves
Speaker 1: in a rather precarious situation. They had been sent to
Speaker 1: the home of a man named Mustaf Alita in the
Speaker 1: mountains of Debra on the advice of an abbot that
Speaker 1: they had met. Mustaf Alita was a bandit of some renown,
Speaker 1: described by Nopucha in his memoir as quote one of
Speaker 1: the most dastardly robbers of Debra in all of Turkey
Speaker 1: at the time. And despite that reputation, the two men
Speaker 1: did indeed set out to meet him at his home.
Speaker 1: They were welcomed and they stayed for several days as guests,
Speaker 1: and at first they were sort of delayed from leaving
Speaker 1: because of bad weather, but then as the weather cleared up,
Speaker 1: mustaf Alita kept coming up with other reasons to keep
Speaker 1: them there. He finally told them that they were his prisoners.
Speaker 1: He was demanding ten thousand Turkish pounds as a ransom
Speaker 1: for their return, and another ten thousand if any of
Speaker 1: the dwellings of his people were damaged in any kind
Speaker 1: of a rescue attempt. At one point, Mustaf Alita attempted
Speaker 1: to bribe Bajazid to assist him in this whole plan
Speaker 1: by offering him two thousand pounds to betray his friend
Speaker 1: and Bajazid turned this down. Yeah, he basically went back
Speaker 1: until Franza You'll never guess what he just did, told
Speaker 1: him the whole story and there was no there were
Speaker 1: no secrets between them. Then Mustaf Alita and the Baron,
Speaker 1: Franz Nopcha discussed the situation and Nopcha kind of made
Speaker 1: a deal and he was given five days to decide
Speaker 1: who they should contact to get the ransom money. During
Speaker 1: that time, he did manage to get a message out
Speaker 1: to the abbot who had sent him to the robber,
Speaker 1: and he told the abbot to send quote five hundred
Speaker 1: armed men or opium and twenty men. Nopia also discussed
Speaker 1: the matter with one of Mustaf Alita's attendants, a man
Speaker 1: named Dalip, who was displeased that their guests were being betrayed.
Speaker 1: So he thought Dahlip might be on his side, and
Speaker 1: Dalip also wanted to work this situation to his own
Speaker 1: advantage and benefit. According to Nopta's memoirs, he and Alip
Speaker 1: discussed three possible ways this whole situation could go. Quote
Speaker 1: One was that Mustaf Alita would demand his ten thousand
Speaker 1: pounds my Albanian friends and Turkish troops would arrive, Lita's
Speaker 1: family lineage would be dishonored and every one would do massacred.
Speaker 1: The second possibility was that Mustaf Aalita would demand a
Speaker 1: bimbashlik position for my release. In this case, I would
Speaker 1: try to calm down my friends and would endeavor to
Speaker 1: keep Turkish troops out of Calis and negotiate with the authorities.
Speaker 1: The end result in this event was unclear. The third
Speaker 1: variant was that Mustaf Alita would take me to Priserin
Speaker 1: and turn me in as a spy. He would thus
Speaker 1: be amnestied by the government, and I would support his
Speaker 1: request for bemba shlik. Yeah. Also for clarity, that first
Speaker 1: option where everyone would be massacred, he was including himself
Speaker 1: and Bajazide in it. He was like, if this goes down,
Speaker 1: we're all gonna die. But maybe we can work out
Speaker 1: one of these other options. So for a little bit
Speaker 1: of additional clarity, A bimba shlik is a military position
Speaker 1: roughly akin to that of an army major. Dalip agreed
Speaker 1: to take these three possible scenarios to Mustaf Alita to consider,
Speaker 1: and even as they negotiated after this with Mustaf Alita
Speaker 1: and his men, Franz Nopcha and Bajaz Doda were making
Speaker 1: backup plans in case the talks broke down, including hiding
Speaker 1: a razor under a rug with the intention of killing
Speaker 1: a guard and escaping out the window using sheets and
Speaker 1: carpets to shim me down from the high floor. So
Speaker 1: upon hearing these three options at first, Mustapha Alita told
Speaker 1: his captives that he had captured them basically as a
Speaker 1: joke to see if they were weak, and he said
Speaker 1: that they could go free. But Nopzha thought that this
Speaker 1: was a trap and he did not accept the offer.
Speaker 1: The baron once again offered to campaign for the robber
Speaker 1: to get his military position if he would turn him
Speaker 1: over to the Turkish government as a spy, and Mustafhealita agreed.
Speaker 1: So as they rode into the city of Prizren, Mustapha
Speaker 1: Alita claimed that he had found Nopcha in disguise as
Speaker 1: a local man along the trail and had captured this
Speaker 1: spy to bring him to the proper authorities. Nopcha was
Speaker 1: put into a prison cell, which he had been counting
Speaker 1: on to separate him from his captor, and meanwhile Bajazid
Speaker 1: was also taken to Pritzrin, but was released per the
Speaker 1: terms of their agree and he was able to get
Speaker 1: a note written by Nocha to the consulate there, and
Speaker 1: then the consulate sent help. Before long this whole affair
Speaker 1: was over. Mustaf Alita realized that he had been outsmarted
Speaker 1: and headed back to his own territory. Bashizin's father had
Speaker 1: gotten word of the kidnapping and had shown up with
Speaker 1: a small army of men planning to kill Mustaf Alita,
Speaker 1: but his son and Nopcha convinced him that he and
Speaker 1: his men could stand down. During their travels, Franz became
Speaker 1: well known in the various areas they visited. He built
Speaker 1: up connections and friendships there, and he became fluent in
Speaker 1: several different Albanian dialects. He became so invested in the
Speaker 1: fate of Albania that he supported the idea of a
Speaker 1: rebellion against the young Turks, and he actually saw himself
Speaker 1: as the Albanian's potential leader in such a war effort.
Speaker 1: There is obviously a little bit of a white savior
Speaker 1: complex and play there, but he also felt he knew
Speaker 1: more about warfare and the people they might be meeting
Speaker 1: than anybody else. In nineteen thirteen, the Albanian Congress of
Speaker 1: Trieste was organized. From February twenty seventh to March sixth
Speaker 1: delegates from the various tribes of Albania came to discuss
Speaker 1: their future as an independent nation and to petition the
Speaker 1: great powers to recognize their status. This event and the
Speaker 1: politics surrounding it could be its whole own subject, but
Speaker 1: as it relates to Baron Franz Nopshka, the great powers
Speaker 1: of the time, which were Austria, Hungary, the United Kingdom, France, Germany,
Speaker 1: Russia and Italy, all had in mind that they would
Speaker 1: install a European as king, and Nopcha suggested himself for
Speaker 1: the job, feeling that he knew more about the area
Speaker 1: and its people than any other aristocrat that might be
Speaker 1: installed in a position of leadership, and indeed he really
Speaker 1: was recognized as the most knowledgeable candidate, both by people
Speaker 1: in Albania and by the rest of the Assembly. But instead,
Speaker 1: Germany's Prince Wilhelm of Vied was established as monarch, and
Speaker 1: at that point Nopia declared that his Albania was dead.
Speaker 1: After this disappointment, Nopsha faced a whole different hurdle and
Speaker 1: that was the loss of his family fortune. During World
Speaker 1: War One, he had resumed his spy work for Austria
Speaker 1: Hungary and he had run guns to northern Albanian tribes.
Speaker 1: He had even headed up in an Albanian division, but
Speaker 1: he was often really frustrated at how the government was
Speaker 1: handling things like occupation of Albanian territories. The Austro Hungarian
Speaker 1: Empire collapsed in nineteen eighteen and Nopha's homeland became part
Speaker 1: of Romania. With that point, his family estate was no
Speaker 1: longer his property. And we're going to talk about the
Speaker 1: last part of Franz Nopcha's life in a moment, but
Speaker 1: first we will take another quick sponsor break. Hey, so
Speaker 1: as we come back, I just want to remind you
Speaker 1: that if you heeded our warning at the top of
Speaker 1: the episode about some violence that's coming up and you
Speaker 1: do not wish to hear it, this would be a
Speaker 1: good time to check out and we bid you adieu.
Speaker 1: But getting back to Franz Nopcha. While paleontology was becoming
Speaker 1: a more established science at this point, as a self
Speaker 1: taught scientist with a reputation for being kind of eccentric
Speaker 1: and even rude, it was pretty difficult for the baron,
Speaker 1: who at this point, you remember, had lost his fortune,
Speaker 1: to make connections into the field that he had in
Speaker 1: some ways helped to pioneer. In April nineteen twenty five,
Speaker 1: Noptah was offered the position of director at the Royal
Speaker 1: Hungarian Institute of Geology. He worked there until November nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty eight. He reorganized the institute, which was a move
Speaker 1: that was seen as a success, but he was never
Speaker 1: really happy there and his health was suffering. At one
Speaker 1: point he was in bed for an entire year. He
Speaker 1: wrote extensively in his three years with the institute, though
Speaker 1: he covered paleontology, geography, and ethnology along with other subjects.
Speaker 1: In total, he wrote almost two hundred different works, and
Speaker 1: roughly a quarter of them were about Albania and its people.
Speaker 1: And Nopcha's health continued to decline. In nineteen twenty eight,
Speaker 1: he gave the opening remarks at a Paleontological Society conference
Speaker 1: that he had invited to come to Budapest, but he
Speaker 1: was so weak at that point that he had to
Speaker 1: give his lecture from a wheelchair, and in his mind
Speaker 1: he believed that his career was basically over. And that
Speaker 1: his lecture would likely be his last work. It was not.
Speaker 1: He continued to write a great deal in the next
Speaker 1: several years, but he resigned from his job just a
Speaker 1: few months later, and he and Bajazid first took a
Speaker 1: motorcycle tour of Europe, starting in Italy, until they ran
Speaker 1: out of money, and then they moved to Vienna. On
Speaker 1: April twenty sixth, nineteen thirty three, Franz Nopsha was living
Speaker 1: in an apartment in Vienna with Bajazid Doda, and they
Speaker 1: had been living there together since he retired from his
Speaker 1: job at the Geological Institute, and that day, while Bajazid
Speaker 1: was asleep, Nopsha sent the housekeeper away on an errand
Speaker 1: and then he shot his sleeping companion and then himself,
Speaker 1: killing both of them and Nopcha. This was clearly something
Speaker 1: he had been planning to do, because he left behind
Speaker 1: a lot of envelopes for people like lawyers and whatnot.
Speaker 1: But he also left behind a note for the police
Speaker 1: and it read quote, the motive for my suicide is
Speaker 1: a nervous breakdown. The reason that I shot my longtime
Speaker 1: friend and secretary, mister Bajazid Elma's Doda in his sleep,
Speaker 1: without his suspecting is that I do not wish to
Speaker 1: leave him behind, sick in misery and without a penny,
Speaker 1: because he would have suffered too much. I wish to
Speaker 1: be cremated. This entire incident was described in detail in
Speaker 1: Vienna's new free Press, all the way down to autopsy
Speaker 1: details and Nopsha's note, and it ran under the unfortunate
Speaker 1: and sensational headline quote bloody drama. In the Singerstrass scholar
Speaker 1: commits murder and suicide. Quickly, a lot of the scholarly
Speaker 1: work that Nopsha and Doda had done was eclipsed by
Speaker 1: the dramatic story of their death, and the two men
Speaker 1: were actually buried across the street from one another. Doda
Speaker 1: was buried in a Muslim section of one of Vienna's cemeteries,
Speaker 1: and Nopcha's cremated remains were interred in a vault, and
Speaker 1: their burials were coordinated so that the two were placed
Speaker 1: in their final resting places at exactly the same time.
Speaker 1: While Nopia had left a list of his unpublished work
Speaker 1: with a colleague named Norbert Jokel, along with instructions about
Speaker 1: who to contact to have them published, that publication didn't
Speaker 1: happen initially. There were financial issues and Jokil held onto
Speaker 1: the works but was killed by Nazis in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen forties. The remaining manuscripts are in the Austrian National Library,
Speaker 1: but some of what's believed to have been his most
Speaker 1: comprehensive writing on Albania has been lost. Yeah, a lot
Speaker 1: of his fossil work was actually retained because before his
Speaker 1: death he had sold a lot of it to I
Speaker 1: think the British Museum, so it's still intact most of
Speaker 1: that research. But a lot of his Albanian work that
Speaker 1: people think is probably some of the most important, is
Speaker 1: completely mia. We have no idea where it ended up.
Speaker 1: Throughout his life, the passionate and obsessive Franz Nopcha had
Speaker 1: dealt with health issues which are a little bit nebulous
Speaker 1: in terms of what we actually know about them. He
Speaker 1: was prolific in his work, but his efforts were often
Speaker 1: interrupted throughout his life by what he called shattered nerves,
Speaker 1: and his mother told people at various times, even when
Speaker 1: he was an adult, like she would kind of write
Speaker 1: notes to excuse him from things, saying that he had
Speaker 1: a recurring illness but she never really gave details about them.
Speaker 1: Even in his own memoirs, he doesn't really detail his
Speaker 1: personal thoughts or feelings. It's all kind of like, here
Speaker 1: are the things that happened, but he doesn't really discuss
Speaker 1: the personal aspects of those experiences at all. That's a consequence.
Speaker 1: It's still something of a struggle for historians to really
Speaker 1: get a sense of what Nosha was like as a person.
Speaker 1: Even his colleagues at the time described him as enigmatic
Speaker 1: and hard to read. He was really passionate about his work,
Speaker 1: and he could be generous with his research. He didn't
Speaker 1: seem like he was seeking fame, but he did think
Speaker 1: he was way ahead of most other people, and he
Speaker 1: was prone to mood swings, which could make him very
Speaker 1: unkind to the people around him. Yeah, there have been
Speaker 1: a lot of theories put forth about what exactly was
Speaker 1: his problem in terms of mental health, but those are
Speaker 1: always tricky, as we've discussed many times on the show,
Speaker 1: like to diagnose somebody post mortem is a whole messy thing,
Speaker 1: particularly for someone who's just doing a casual assessment from
Speaker 1: a historical standpoint rather than someone who's actually trained in psychology.
Speaker 1: But in a paper on Nopsch's work, written by David B.
Speaker 1: Weishample and Wolf ernst Rife, The writers make a really
Speaker 1: nice point about how privilege and a lack of formal
Speaker 1: education kind of robbed Nopcha of his ability to turn
Speaker 1: a critical eye to his own work and perhaps consequently
Speaker 1: learn to moderate his behavior. They wrote, quote, yet to
Speaker 1: characterize Nopcha as arrogant is to overlook the obvious problem
Speaker 1: of combining in one person a high level of intelligence
Speaker 1: and creativity not often tempered with the ability of self criticism.
Speaker 1: Nopcha's studies in tectonic geology, evolutionary biology, paleo biogeography, and
Speaker 1: sexual dimorphism prove his ability to intelligently discover problems and
Speaker 1: solve them in remarkable ways. Ability to criticize his own
Speaker 1: work acted both against and for Nopia. Against because of
Speaker 1: outlandish and easily falsified ideas which he presented on paper,
Speaker 1: and four because he excelled at assembling disparate ideas into
Speaker 1: new frameworks. A lot of his ideas that were met
Speaker 1: with skepticism while he was living have come to be
Speaker 1: pretty widely accepted in the year since his death. For example,
Speaker 1: his idea that the area known as Hotzig had been
Speaker 1: an island during the Cretaceous period, has been supported by
Speaker 1: additional research over the years. His island theory about limited
Speaker 1: resources causing dwarfism and species is now known as the
Speaker 1: Island Rule, although it's credited in its more formally detailed
Speaker 1: form is Foster's Rule, which is named for a biologist J.
Speaker 1: Bristol Foster, who wrote a paper establishing the idea in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four. And Sachel Castle, the family home of
Speaker 1: Franz Nopsha, has fallen into ruin and it has, through
Speaker 1: historical conservation efforts, been placed on a list of cultural
Speaker 1: Heritage sites in Romania with the intent that the government
Speaker 1: will provide financial support for restoration and upkeep, although those
Speaker 1: funds have actually been slow to materialize, so it is
Speaker 1: still in a pretty sad state of disrepair at this
Speaker 1: point