Emanuel von Friedrichsthal

Emanuel Friedrich Thal ( * January 12, 1809 Urschitz at Brno, † March 13 1842 in Vienna ) was an Austrian travel writer and pioneer of photo expedition in Central America. Its official botanical author abbreviation is " Friedr. ".

Emanuel Friedrich Thal attended Theresa Military Academy and was a few years, active until 1834, in the civil service. In the years 1834-1837 he traveled to Greece and Turkey, bringing with him extensive scientific collections, one of which was taking a part in the Imperial Natural History Collection. An expedition to Serbia and Macedonia joined them. 1839 and 1840/41, he traveled with Metternich's support Central America, on the second expedition, a year after becoming aware of the process of the daguerreotype, through the taught him in New York John William Draper, he made in the Maya area of the Yucatan, the first photographic images, of houses, found objects and the Mayan ruins at. He visited Izamal, Uxmal and Chichen Itza which was then difficult to access. Twenty-five of these now lost photographs were shown in New York, the British Museum in London and in Paris. Two other daguerreotypes, which can be attributed to him, have come into the possession of the explorer Charles Bartholomew Heller few years after his death in Yucatan; they are located since 1970 in the Heller estate of the Austrian National Library. Friedrichsthal retired to on the research trip a tropical disease of which he died on his return.

Writings

• Travel in the southern parts of Neugriechenland Willhelm Engelmann, Leipzig 1838 Online.
• Serbia's modern era in historical, political, topographical, statistical and natural history point of view. Leipzig, Vienna 1840, online. - Under the pseudonym Emanuel Thal

• Les Monuments de L' Yucatán. In: Nouvelles Annales des Voyages et des Sciences Géographiques. Volume 92, Paris 1841, pp. 291-314, online.
• Sobre los que los construyeron edificios Yucatecos y sus Antigüedades. Carta a Justo Sierre. In: El Museo Yucateco. Volume 1, Campeche 1941, p 178-182,
• Notes on the Lake of Nicaragua and the Province of Chontales in Guatemala. In: The Journal of the Royal Geographic Society of London, Volume 11, 1941 pp. 97-100, online.