FRANZ SCHRADER (1844-1924),
The Cirque de Barrosa (1,745m - 5,725 ft)
France- Spain border (Pyrénées)
In "Le Cirque de Barrosa", watercolor
The painter
Jean-Daniel-François Schrader, better known as Franz Schrader,
was a French mountaineer, geographer, cartographer and landscape
painter. He made an important contribution to the mapping of the
Pyrenees and was highly considered among the pyreneists.
He is the
son of Prussian Ferdinand Schrader from Magdeburg, who emigrated to
Bordeaux, and of Marie-Louise Ducos, cousin of geographers Élisée and
Onésime Reclus. He shows a talent for drawing from an early age. In
1866, while staying with his friend Léonce Lourde-Rocheblave in Pau, he
has a sort of revelation at the "spectacle grandiose de la barrière
montagneuse des Pyrenées ".
His vocation strengthens 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 gathers
thousands of observations for his topographical records, he still finds
time to paint numerous panoramas of the Pyrenees as well as the Alps
which he also studies, and to acquire a solid formation in topography.
To facilitate topographical work in rugged terrain, he develops the
orograph in 1873. His first great cartographic work, in 1874, is the map
of the massif of Gavarnie-Mont-Perdu at a scale of 1:40 000, for which
he collects the measurements with the participation of Lourde-Rocheblave
from nearby Pau. That map triggers such a sensation that it is included
in the annual Mémoires of the Société des Sciences Physiques et
Naturelles de Bordeaux with an explanatory text the following year. The
Club alpin français directory follows with the publication of an
enthusiastic review, describing Schrader as qualified for "first rank
topographer in a glorious master stroke". In 1876 he takes part in the
creation of the Bordeaux section of the Club Alpin Français, becoming
its first president.
In 1877 he travels to Paris with a
recommendation from his cousins Élisée and Onésime Reclus. There, having
met Émile Templier, nephew and collaborator of Louis Hachette, and
Adolphe Joanne, president of the Parisian section of the Club Alpin
Français, he is employed as a geographer by Librairie Hachette and is
now able to practice his passion in the scope of his profession. He also
gives geography lessons at the School of Anthropology and also becomes
editor of the French Alpine Club directory
In 1927, three years
after his death, his remains are transferred to a tomb on a slope of the
Circus of Gavarnie (French Pyrenees).
The mountain
The
Cirque de Barrosa (1745m - (Circo de Barrosa in Spanish) is a glacial
cirque located in the center of the Pyrenees chain, in Spain, in the
comarca of Sobrarbe (province of Huesca, autonomous community of
Aragon). Part of its ridge line forms the border with France.
It is a
beautiful mountain circus, attractive for mountaineers, but it is
distinguished by its geological structure in two floors, the upper floor
being part of an overlap, and by the remains of an old mule track which
crosses it from side to side. However, these two singularities are
intimately linked since this path has been laid out on a natural cornice
which runs, in the cliffs, at the limit between the two floors, which
gives its route a great interest from a geological point of view.
In
addition, the Cirque de Barrosa provides the opportunity to take an
interest in several stories: those of mining in the region of the
cirque, to which this path is linked; that of human relations between
France and the Bielsa valley, via this path or neighboring passes; that
of an episode of the Spanish Civil War, of which the Bielsa Valley was
the scene; and that of Pyreneism, whose pioneers discovered the circus
at the end of the 19th century.
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2022 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau
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