Franz Schrader

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

Biography The son of Prussian Ferdinand Schrader from Magdeburg, who emigrated to Bordeaux, and of Marie-Louise Ducos, Schrader was from a family of Nérac and the cousin of geographers Élisée and Onésime Reclus. He showed a talent for drawing from an early age. But his strict father, denying him the opportunity of higher education, placed him as a pen pusher at a tax gatherer. Franz then found another job in a trading house run by one of his father's friends, a situation where he could devote more time to broadening his literary and scientific knowledge.

In 1866, while staying with his friend Léonce Lourde-Rocheblave in Pau, he had a sort of revelation at the spectacle grandiose de la barrière montagneuse of the Pyrenees. His vocation strengthened when reading stories by Ramond de Carbonnières (1755–1827) (Les Voyages au Mont-Perdu – Travels to Monte Perdido) and by Henry Russell (1834–1909) (Les Grandes Ascensions des Pyrénées, guide d'une mer à l'autre – Great ascents of the Pyrenees, a guide from one sea to the other). and to acquire a solid formation in topography.

While Schrader scoured the Pyrenees with his friend Lourde-Rocheblave, he also acquired a strong background in cartography with the aim of applying it to a large scale map of the nearby Pyrenees. To facilitate topographical work in rugged terrain, he developed the orograph in 1873. His first great cartographic work, in 1874, was the map of the massif of Gavarnie-Mont-Perdu at a scale of 1:40 000, for which he collected the measurements with the participation of Lourde-Rocheblave from nearby Pau. That map triggered such a sensation that it was included in the annual Mémoires of the Société des Sciences Physiques et Naturelles of Bordeaux with an explanatory text the following year. The Club alpin français directory followed with the publication of an enthusiastic review, describing Schrader as qualified for "first rank topographer in a glorious master stroke". In 1876 he took part in the creation of the Bordeaux section of the Club Alpin Français, becoming its first president. (Paris) and its text is reproduced in 1898 in the Club Alpin Français directory.

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

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

Named from the ancient Greek word for "mountain", and -graph, the orograph was developed at the turn of the 1870s. It was designed to take precise measurements of mountains. One of its characteristics is its ease of transport: it is small enough to be carried while scrambling in the mountains.

It is equipped with a sort of telescope that the operator moves along the relief, linked to a rule carrying a pen. The pen draws onto a paper disk that registers the lines on which the telescope is aimed. It thus creates an instant graph of said relief. 1914 : carte de Gavarnie - Mont Perdu, à 1/20 000.

Paintings le Cirque de Gavarnie la Grande Cascade de Gavarnie le Lac Glacé du Mont-Perdu le Massif de la Maladetta Panorama du mont Blanc (presented at the pavillon du Club alpin français, during l'Exposition universelle of 1900) le Pic du Midi d'Ossau le Vignemale

Non-comprehensive list (several hundreds of landscape paintings)

Geography lessons In collaboration with Henri Lemonnier : Éléments de géographie, rédigés suivant les programmes de l'enseignement primaire. Cours élémentaire, Paris : Hachette, 1881 Éléments de géographie, rédigés suivant les programmes de l'enseignement primaire. Cours moyen, Paris : Hachette, 1883 Éléments de géographie, rédigés suivant les programmes de l'enseignement primaire. Cours supérieur, Paris : Hachette, 1883 In collaboration with Louis Gallouédec : High number of geography school manuels (secondary), Paris, Hachette, collection "Schrader et Gallouédec"

Other Études géographiques et excursions dans le massif du Mont-Perdu, Paris : Gauthier-Villars, 1875 Franz Schrader, Xavier Blanc et E. Levasseur, Adolphe Joanne, 1813–1881, Paris, impr. de G. Chamerot, s. d., 24 p. Le Facteur planétaire de l'évolution humaine, Paris : V. Giard et E. Brière, 1902, 15 pages Pyrénées. Tome I : Courses et ascensions, Toulouse : É. Privat, 1936. With foreword, by Dr Georges Sabatier, and Franz Schrader, esquisse biographique, by Maurice Heïd Pyrénées. Tome II : Science et art, Paris : Éd. Didier, 1936. Suivi dEssai de biblio-iconographie, par Maurice Heïd

Honours 1889 : chevalier de la Légion d'honneur 1928 : grande médaille d'or de la Société géographique de Paris (à titre posthume)