Biography

Austrian traveller and plant collector. Born into a land-owning family in Brünn (now Brno, Czech Republic), Friedrichsthal was educated in Vienna before entering the service of the Austrian government. He soon left to pursue travels, first to Greece (1834-1835), then to Serbia and Macedonia (1836-1839) with the geologist Ami Boué. He published two books of observations on the countries, including detailed descriptions of their flora. Almost immediately after these adventures he was appointed to a post in Mexico as first secretary to the Austrian Legation. He took the opportunity to travel in the Yucatán and Chiapas, where he made daguerreotypes. He was the first to take such early photographs of Mayan ruins here. He also journeyed through great parts of Guatemala, Nicaragua and Costa Rica over the course of two years, and visited St. Thomas in 1841 before sailing back to Europe with many boxes of plant specimens. These were deposited in the herbarium at Vienna, with duplicates sent to Kew. Not long after returning to Vienna he died, probably from malaria. While he was unable to complete an account of this trip for publication, he did mount an exhibition of 25 daguerreotypes he had made.

Sources:
W.B. Hemsley, in F.D. Godman and O. Salvin (editors), 1888, Biologia Centrali-Americana, 4: 128
A. Oersted, 1853, Hooker’s Journal of Botany and Kew Miscellany, 5: 46
P.E. Palmquist and T.R. Kailbourn, 2000, Pioneer Photographers of the Far West: A Biographical Dictionary, 1940-1865: 252
H.W. Reichardt, 1878, Allgemeines Deutsche Biographie, 8: 68
I. Urban, 1902, Symbolae Antillanae, 3: 49.