Franz Schrader (geographer)

Franz Schrader ≈ 1875

Jean Daniel François Schrader, better known as Franz Schrader, was a French mountaineer, geographer, cartographer and landscape painter, born January 11, 1844 in Bordeaux, died October 18, 1924 in Paris. He made an important contribution to the mapping of the Pyrenees

Biography

He was the son of Prussian Ferdinand Schrader from Magdeburg, who emigrated to Bordeaux, and of Marie-Louise Ducos, from a family of Nérac, and cousin of geographers Élisée and Onésime Reclus. He showed an a talent for drawing from an early age, but not having been granted the opportunity of higher education by his father, he found a perception vacancy, then in a trading house, devoting all his free time to broaden his literary and scientific knowledge.

In 1866, while staying with his friend Léonce Lourde-Rocheblave in Pau, he had a sort of révélation at the spectacle grandiose de la barrière montagneuse of the Pyrénées. His vocation strengthened when reading stories by Ramond de Carbonnières (1755-1827) (Les Voyages au Mont-Perdu) and by Henry Russell (1834-1909) (Les Grandes Ascensions des Pyrénées, guide d'une mer à l'autre). While devoting the main part of his leisure to long hikes in the mountains, during which he gathered thousands of observations for his topographical records, he still found time to paint numerous panoramas of the Pyrénées as well as the Alps, which he fares also.

To facilitate topographical work in rugged terrain, he developed the orographe in 1873. His first great cartographical work, in 1874, is the map of the massif of Gavarnie-Mont-Perdu, at a scale of 1:40 000 (with Lourde-Rocheblave) triggers such a sensation that it is included in the annual Mémoires annuels of la Société des Sciences Physiques et Naturelles de Bordeaux with an explanatory text the following year. The Club alpin français directory instantly published an enthusiastic review, describing Schraderq as qualifying as "first rank topographer in a glorious master stroke". In 1876 he took part in the creation of the Section Bordelaise du Club Alpin Français and instantly became president.

In 1877 he travelled to Paris, with a recommendation from his cousins Élisée and Onésime Reclus and, after having met Émile Templier, nephew and collaborator of Louis Hachette, and Adolphe Joanne, president of la Section Parisienne du Club Alpin Français, he was employed as a geographer by Librairie Hachette, now being able to exert his passion in the scope of his profession. He also gave geography lessons at l'école d'anthropologie and also became editor of the French Club Alpine directory.

On August 11, 1878, accompanied by high-mountain guide Henri Passet, he carried out the first known ascension of the Grand Batchimale (3,176 m), consequently renamed pic Schrader.

In 1880, he was promoted director of cartography for Hachette and targeted himself the aim of surpassing in quality the Stieler Atlas, by German Adolf Stieler. On November 25, 1897, Franz Schrader, vice-president of the C.A.F., held a conference at the Club Alpin which constitutes his true esthetical credo of the mountain and in which he announced the imminent foundation of a French school of mountain painting. The conference text title was : À quoi tient la beauté des montagnes, is considered as the birth bulletin of la Société des peintres de montagne - Paris - This text was reproduced in 1898 in the Club Alpin Français directory.

From 1901 he 1904, he presides le Club Alpin Français. He actively contributed to the Guides Joanne of the Librairie Hachette, which in 1919 became les Guides bleus.

The scientific commission created by Franz Schrader in the Club Alpin Français still exists today, as well as la Société des Peintres de Montagne - Paris.

in 1927, three years after his death, his remains were transferred to a tomb on a flanc of the Cirque de Gavarnie.

Œuvres

Atlas

Topography

Paintings

Uncomprehensive list (several hundreds of landscape paintings)

Geography lessons

in collaboration with Henri Lemonnier :

In collaboration with Louis Gallouédec :

Other

Honours

References

  1. ↑ carte des Pyrénées centrales à 1/100 000