Baron Sigmund Zois von Edelstein

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Zois mansion in Ljubljana

Sigmund Zois (Žiga Zois) (23 November 1747 in Trieste - 10 November 1819 in Ljubljana) studied natural sciences with Gabriel Gruber and Joseph Maffei in Ljubljana.

Sigmund was born in Ljubljana (capital of present Slovenia) in 1747.

Sigmund's father, Michelangelo Zois was a Venitian salesman who moved to Ljubljana where he made a considerable fortune. He married a Slovenian noblewoman and acquired the right to the title of baron.

After attending several private schools, Sigmund Zois moved to Italy where he continued his education. He enjoyed traveling and getting acquainted to new people. However, his way of life was soon truncated by gout, a disease that would stuck him for the rest of his life. After returning to Ljubljana, he developed a strong interest in sciences and worked with Baltazar Hacquet and other Slovenian intellectuals.

In 1780, his house in Ljubljana became a fostering center for liberal intellectuals at the center of the Slovenian enlightenment. Jurij Japelj, Blaž Kumerdej, Jernej Kopitar, Anton Tomaž Linhart, Valentin Vodnik were all members of the “Zois circle”.

Zois was their mecenate (patron), he mentored them and granted financial support, and becamethe central figure of the Slovenian enlightenment. He was a deist and his views were rational and empirical. Nevertheless, he strongly disagreed with the French revolution.

Literary work by Sigmund Zois includes many literary forms and genres, ranging from arias for the opera to lyrics for folk music, although probably only a minor part of his work has been preserved. His translation of the poem Lorelei by Gottfried August Burger was regarded as a complete failure, and Zois himself later came to believe that the Slovenian language was too mediocre and rough to allow for such a literary achievement. He would be disproven only some decades later by France Prešeren who managed to compose a complex and exceptional translation of the same poem. Zois is also regarded as a father of Slovenian literary criticism, most of his literary reviews can be found in his correspondence with Valentin Vodnik.

He worked in mineralogy, geology, botany and zoology. His collection of minerals (around 5,000 items) is kept in a museum in Ljubljana.

In 1795 he mounted two expeditions to explore the land around the Triglav mountain. In 1805 a mineral zoisite was named after him, since Zois correctly judged that the finding of Simon Presern in the Alps in Carinthia represented an unknown mineral.

Sigmund also helped his brother, a botanist Karl Zois, the discoverer of Campanula zoysii. The main award for science and also a state scholarship for talented students in Slovenia is named after Žiga Zois.