Franz Nopcsa: the queer paleobiologist spy/scholar/lover you need to know about

Come with me to a not-so-conventional Valentine's night at the Natural History Museum, where I tell you all about Franz Nopcsa, a Hungarian aristocrat who pioneered methods of palaeobiology while spying for the Austro-Hungarian Empire and riding around Europe on his motorbike with his secretary/boyfriend and becoming so obsessed with Albanian language and culture that he offered to be their king (as you do). Featuring a cafe review (Valentine's edition), shark copulation and pink aesthetic shots of the Museum :)

[00:38] Valentine's at the Museum, Natural History Museum, https://www.nhm.ac.uk/events/valentines.html

[04:40] 'Baron Franz Nopcsa in Albanian uniform', photograph, 1915, Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Baron_Franz_Nopcsa_in_Albanian_uniform.jpg

[05:00] Carl Pietzner, 'Franz Nopcsa', photograph, 1913, Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nopcsa_by_Carl_Pietzner.jpg

[05:09] 'Nopcsa family home', photograph, 1926, Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Castelul_Familia_Nopcsa_1926.jpg

[5:20] 'Elmer Riggs Harold W. Menke preparing Grand Junction Colorado fossils', photograph, 1894, Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Altithorax.jpg

[05:30] a photo from some of my own museum fossil hunting adventures!

[05:38] 'Paleontology, skeletons, fossils, line illustrations', illustration, 1932, WIkimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pal%C3%A9ontologie,squelettes,_fossiles,_mammouth,_planche_1-Paleontology,_mammoth,_skeletons,_fossils,_line_illustrations,_etc.-_Public_domain_illustration_from_Larousse_du_XX%C3%A8me_si%C3%A8cle_1932.jpg

[05:06] 'Stegosarus', plate, c. 1900s from Richard Fallon, 'Making Dinosaur a Household Word', 16 Sep 2021, Cambridge Fifteen Eighty Four, https://www.cambridgeblog.org/2021/09/making-dinosaur-a-household-word/

[06:55] 'Bajazid Elmaz Doda', photograph, 1931, Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bajazid_Doda.png

[07:10] Read Franz's account of their kidnap in the Albanian mountains here: http://www.albanianhistory.net/1907_Nopcsa2/index.html

[08:01] 'The Austro-Hungarian Army in the Romanian Campaign', photograph, c. 1916-1918, Imperial War Museum, https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205331885

[08:05] 'Curtiss NC-4 four engine configuration after transatlantic flight', photograph, 1919, Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Curtiss_NC-4_four_engine_configuration_after_transatlantic_flight.jpg

[08:26] 'Another look at a small photo album from the 1920s and a glance through the 24th edition of "MotorCycles and How to Manage The"', 20 Jun 2011, The Velobanjogent, https://velobanjogent.blogspot.com/2011/06/another-look-at-small-photo-album-from.html

[08:40] Franz Nopcsa, edited and translated by Robert Elsie, Traveler, Scholar, Political Adventurer: A Transylvanian Baron at the Birth of Albanian Independence: The Memoirs of Franz Nopcsa (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2014), p. 25

[09:20] 'Former Royal Palace of Albania' c. 1920s, Wikimedia Commons,

[09:20] 'Former Royal Palace of Albania', photograph, c. 1920s, Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Konaku_i_Durr%C3%ABsit.jpg

[09:30] Franz Nopcsa, edited and translated by Robert Elsie, Traveler, Scholar, Political Adventurer: A Transylvanian Baron at the Birth of Albanian Independence: The Memoirs of Franz Nopcsa (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2014), p. 162

[10:00] Franz Nopcsa, 'Geological Map of Northern Albania', Chromolithograph with monochrome lithographed overlay, c. 1916

[10:30] 'Bloody drama in the Singerstrasse: scholar commits murder and suicide', Neue Freie Press, 26 April 1933, Vienna, from Robert Elsie, Traveler, Scholar, Political Adventurer: A Transylvanian Baron at the Birth of Albanian Independence: The Memoirs of Franz Nopcsa (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2014), p. x