Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff He Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy B. Wilson,
Speaker 1: and today we are talking about a fascinating gent whose
Speaker 1: story I stumbled across while looking for something else. Entirely,
Speaker 1: as is often the case with me, I'm on one
Speaker 1: track and then I go, oh, what's that shiny object?
Speaker 1: And then I'm on a whole other track. Uh. He's
Speaker 1: very complicated and complex to look at and kind of
Speaker 1: figure out who he was. He's Baron Franz Nopecha, who
Speaker 1: lived from eighteen seventy seven to ninety three, and he
Speaker 1: was Transylvanian. He identified dinosaurs, He inserted himself into Albanian
Speaker 1: politics and became a scholar on Albania, and he wrote
Speaker 1: volumes and volumes of books and papers. And he was
Speaker 1: one of those people that lad that sort of adventurous
Speaker 1: scholarly life that only an aristocrat of his time could managed,
Speaker 1: I mean by passed most formal education. And so he
Speaker 1: was funded in all of these efforts by his family money.
Speaker 1: It wasn't as though he was doing it to make
Speaker 1: a living. He was just living and pursuing his interests,
Speaker 1: and he was definitely a man clearly who had and
Speaker 1: took advantage of his privilege, although he did ultimately lose it.
Speaker 1: I also have to give you a heads up listeners
Speaker 1: that this episode contains gun violence and suicide. I feel
Speaker 1: bad because I know I've had to put similar warnings
Speaker 1: on several episodes lately. I swear I am not doing
Speaker 1: that on purpose. It's always like the thing I find
Speaker 1: out late in the game and they go, oh, man um.
Speaker 1: But that is near the end. So if you would
Speaker 1: like to listen to most of the show but maybe
Speaker 1: not get that, you can tap out if you just
Speaker 1: uh leave after our second ad break, because it comes
Speaker 1: after that, so if you just missed that last segment,
Speaker 1: you won't get any of that. So. He was born
Speaker 1: on May three, eighty seven in Sechelle, Transylvania, which is
Speaker 1: now the city of Deva, Romania. At the time, this
Speaker 1: was all part of the Austro Hungarian Empire, and, as
Speaker 1: highly noted earlier, his family was wealthy. His mother, Matilde,
Speaker 1: was from an aristocratic family. His father, Alexius, was the
Speaker 1: vice director of the Hungarian Royal Opera. Franz was the
Speaker 1: first of three children for the two of them, and
Speaker 1: as children of a pretty wealthy family, he and his
Speaker 1: siblings were well educated. They all spoke multiple languages, and
Speaker 1: the family wasn't just wealthy, but also very well connected.
Speaker 1: His uncle was well known in the court of Austria
Speaker 1: and was a favorite of Empress Elizabeth, and that connection
Speaker 1: was pretty helpful, maybe even pivotal, in Franz's life. And
Speaker 1: when Franz was still a teenager, his sister brought him
Speaker 1: something that would shift his life significantly because it sparked
Speaker 1: what has often been called an obsession on Franz's part. Alona,
Speaker 1: the sister, had found some sort of animal skull on
Speaker 1: a river bank while she had been out for a walk,
Speaker 1: and she thought her older brother might help her figure
Speaker 1: out what it was. There is an alternate version of
Speaker 1: this story that you will sometimes read, which involved local
Speaker 1: peasants bringing his sister Ilana the skull, but regardless of
Speaker 1: which of those is accurate, it did pass from her
Speaker 1: to her brother and make him very curious. Indeed, that
Speaker 1: was the same year that he was starting some studies
Speaker 1: at the University of Vienna, so he decided to bring
Speaker 1: it to one of his professors there Edwards Seuss for identification.
Speaker 1: They didn't get the help that he was looking for,
Speaker 1: though initially seemed kind of intrigued by this whole thing,
Speaker 1: but he lost interest and instead the professor told the
Speaker 1: eighteen year old France that he needed to do his
Speaker 1: own leg work to figure out what he had. And
Speaker 1: Noa did exactly that. Yeah, he returned to his family's
Speaker 1: castle and he basically set up his own little research
Speaker 1: center there. There were a lot of books already available
Speaker 1: to him in the family library, and from those he
Speaker 1: gave himself a foundational knowledge in geology, physiology, and anatomy.
Speaker 1: And then he started reaching out to various scholars asking
Speaker 1: for more research materials so that he could continue his
Speaker 1: self education. And then he started at his own amateur
Speaker 1: excavation site on the river bank where that skull had
Speaker 1: been found. So he was an amateur, but he was
Speaker 1: doing meticulous work. He found a number of other fossils
Speaker 1: as he was digging, and he started applying the things
Speaker 1: that he knew about animal physiology to the things that
Speaker 1: he found. He was reconstructing the anatomy of what it
Speaker 1: turned out were seventy million year old dinosaur bones from
Speaker 1: the late Mesozoic era. For the next four years, he
Speaker 1: worked on figuring out not only the anatomy of the
Speaker 1: species that he had accidentally come across, but also its
Speaker 1: reproduction and its behavior. And he did this once again
Speaker 1: by comparing things he found like nests, to the nests
Speaker 1: of existing animals to try to figure out where there
Speaker 1: were parallels and where there were differences. And because of
Speaker 1: this work he's considered one of the first paleophysiologists. In
Speaker 1: eight Franz Noche was ready to show the scientific world
Speaker 1: what he had been working on, so he went to
Speaker 1: the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and, as a twenty two
Speaker 1: year old with no formal scientific training beyond like his
Speaker 1: basically the equivalent of high school, he offered up a
Speaker 1: lecture that both wowed and insulted the scientific community. It
Speaker 1: seems that the combination of youthful confidence and having worked
Speaker 1: outside of academia on his project made Nopcha completely comfortable
Speaker 1: telling well known scientists that they were doing it wrong.
Speaker 1: He also doled out some praise along the way, but
Speaker 1: in a really condescending way. So again, he was twenty
Speaker 1: two and at one point he mentioned that the Belgian
Speaker 1: paleontologist Louis Dolo was really doing quite well for his age. Ah.
Speaker 1: It was like, oh, you've contributed so much despite how
Speaker 1: young you are. And this was a man in his forties.
Speaker 1: Um So. Dolo, we should also say, had been in
Speaker 1: charge of the dig site where one of the most
Speaker 1: famous iguanadon fines in history took place at this point,
Speaker 1: but it was obvious to everyone present that he was brilliance.
Speaker 1: He actually had come to some well founded conclusions. His
Speaker 1: Late Cretaceous dynasty or was called the Talmatosaurus translavannicus. It
Speaker 1: was the first of dozens of species that he would
Speaker 1: identify over his career. That first dinosaur he identified was little,
Speaker 1: at least in dinosaur terms. It was no bigger than
Speaker 1: a crocodile, which I suppose of you came across it
Speaker 1: in the wild, might seem like a big animal compared
Speaker 1: to you, for a dinosaur, not so much. Uh. Several
Speaker 1: other species he found in that same area were also
Speaker 1: relatively small. A theory started to circulate in the scientific
Speaker 1: community that Nopja had somehow found only juvenile specimens, But
Speaker 1: he did not agree with that assessment, and he worked
Speaker 1: really hard to disprove it. To that end, he started,
Speaker 1: among other things, microscopic examinations of the bones that he
Speaker 1: had in cross section, cutting very thin slices from his
Speaker 1: samples to do his work, and from these he was
Speaker 1: able to determine that the dinosaur specimens he had been
Speaker 1: working with all along had been adults. His hypothesis was
Speaker 1: that the area near the river had actually been an
Speaker 1: island during the Cretaceous period, and that the limited environment
Speaker 1: had also limited the size of the animals that lived there.
Speaker 1: And this was something that he called island theory. The
Speaker 1: idea that was that fewer resources meant that smaller animals
Speaker 1: were able to survive, while larger ones couldn't sustain their
Speaker 1: size with the food sources, so the larger animals would
Speaker 1: die off. Yeah, if that sounds similiar, it is, And
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that a little bit at the end
Speaker 1: of the episode. But next up, we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about kind of the next phase of Noche's life, which
Speaker 1: takes an interesting turn. But first we're going to hear
Speaker 1: from one of the sponsors that keep stuff you missed
Speaker 1: in history class going. In his early twenties, Franz Nocho
Speaker 1: was making waves in paleontology, but he was also shifting
Speaker 1: his scientific curiosity to other subjects during this time. It
Speaker 1: wasn't abandoning dinosaurs, but he was just becoming interested in
Speaker 1: other things as well. Specifically, he decided that he wanted
Speaker 1: to study the tribes of the Albanian mountains, and this
Speaker 1: was a subject he learned about from a Transylvanian count
Speaker 1: named Luis Dreskovic that he was close with, and the
Speaker 1: two men may have been romantically involved, although that's not
Speaker 1: entirely clear. With money from his uncle, who was in
Speaker 1: the Austrian court, Franz mounted his first expedition into the
Speaker 1: mountains of Albania in H three. Early on in this trip,
Speaker 1: he did some bird hunting and he shot several birds,
Speaker 1: has earned him a reputation is a good shot, and
Speaker 1: that helped him with some of his relationships with the locals.
Speaker 1: Although there was a lot of danger in this undertaking,
Speaker 1: including some attempts on his life, he and his uncle
Speaker 1: both kept this trip a secret from Franz's parents. Yeah,
Speaker 1: eventually after he came back from the trip, they came clean,
Speaker 1: but they didn't really know that he was going off
Speaker 1: to do this and this kind of trip obviously is
Speaker 1: something that he could not have done on his own
Speaker 1: had he not been from a wealthy family with an
Speaker 1: uncle willing to fund it. But that connection to his uncle,
Speaker 1: and then his uncle's connection to the highest levels of
Speaker 1: power in Austria Hungary at the time, actually shifted his
Speaker 1: fortunes in a slightly unexpected way. Franz made numerous trips
Speaker 1: into Albania after H three, and the funding for them
Speaker 1: eventually shifted from coming out of his uncle's pocket to
Speaker 1: coming from the empire itself because Nopia had been recruited
Speaker 1: as a spy. The area where he was conducting his
Speaker 1: research trips was right between the Ottoman Empire and the
Speaker 1: Austro Hungarian Empire, so it made sense to make his work,
Speaker 1: which involved mapping the area and studying the culture, into
Speaker 1: an official but secret effort on the part of the government. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This was, obviously, we'll talk about it a little bit more,
Speaker 1: kind of a time of destabilization in that area, and
Speaker 1: so the Austria Hungary authorities thought like, hey, it would
Speaker 1: be really beneficial for us to know exactly what's going
Speaker 1: on in this this stretch of land. And he's already
Speaker 1: making the maps. So if we pay for these trips,
Speaker 1: maybe he can just share his notes with us. So
Speaker 1: that's what he did, and on one of these trips,
Speaker 1: Franz met a man in a mountain village named Bajeside
Speaker 1: Elms Doda, and he hired him to be his personal secretary.
Speaker 1: The two men were very close. They were together the
Speaker 1: rest of their lives, and they probably were romantically involved.
Speaker 1: Uh Noa named one of his discoveries and upper Cretaceous
Speaker 1: turtle species that he discovered after Badges, and he once
Speaker 1: wrote of Doda that quote, he was the only person
Speaker 1: who has truly loved me. We should really not play
Speaker 1: down the important role that bad Doda made. He was
Speaker 1: a scholar in his own right. And from the time
Speaker 1: they met until they're far too early end, which we
Speaker 1: will get to later, Noa and Doda traveled together, and
Speaker 1: while bad was supporting the aristocrats work, he was also
Speaker 1: photographing and documenting the culture of the Muslim people of
Speaker 1: the upper raak Of Valley. He wrote several books about
Speaker 1: the Albanian people, and this was a time of great
Speaker 1: instability in Albania. The Ottomans had ruled Albania off and
Speaker 1: on since the fifteenth century, and Doda was capturing in
Speaker 1: photographs and in words, the isolation that Albanians felt as
Speaker 1: they were cut off from the rest of the world
Speaker 1: and this whole geo political maneuvering of the Ottoman Empire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can find some of his photographs online and they're
Speaker 1: really quite striking. I mean, one, when you consider like
Speaker 1: where photography was at at the time, they're already really
Speaker 1: really interesting to look at. But he does a really
Speaker 1: nice job of just like capturing these moments in the
Speaker 1: lives of these people that are just trying to figure
Speaker 1: out their place in a world that is shifting around
Speaker 1: them very rapidly, but that they have very little say
Speaker 1: in um. And they're quite beautiful, so I recommend them.
Speaker 1: During a trip in nineteen o seven, Franz and Bajaesid
Speaker 1: found themselves in a rather precarious situation. They had been
Speaker 1: sent to the home of a man named Mustaf Alita
Speaker 1: in the mountains of Debra on the advice of an
Speaker 1: abbot that they had met. Mustaf Alita was a bandit
Speaker 1: of some renown, described by Nopeche in his memoir as
Speaker 1: quote one of the most dastardly robbers of Debra. In
Speaker 1: all of Turkey at the time, and despite that reputation,
Speaker 1: the two men indeed set out to meet him at
Speaker 1: his home. They were welcomed and they stayed for several
Speaker 1: days as guests, and at first they were sort of
Speaker 1: delayed from leaving because of bad weather, but then as
Speaker 1: the weather cleared up, Mustaf Alita kept coming up with
Speaker 1: other reasons to keep them there. He finally told them
Speaker 1: that they were his prisoners. He was demanding ten thousand
Speaker 1: Turkish pounds as a ransom for their return, and another
Speaker 1: ten thousand if any of the dwellings of his people
Speaker 1: were damaged in any kind of a rescue attempt. At
Speaker 1: one point, Mustaf Alita attempted to bribe Bases to assist
Speaker 1: him in this whole plan by offering him two thousand
Speaker 1: pounds to betray his friend, and turned this down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he basically went back and told Franz like you'll never
Speaker 1: guess what he just did, told him the whole story
Speaker 1: and there was no there were no secrets between them.
Speaker 1: Then Mustaf Alita and the baron Franz Nopcha discussed the
Speaker 1: situation and Nocha kind of made a deal and he
Speaker 1: was given five days to decide who they should contact
Speaker 1: to get the ransom money. In that time, he did
Speaker 1: manage to get a message out to the abbot who
Speaker 1: had sent him to the robber, and he told the
Speaker 1: abbot to send quote five hundred armed men or opium
Speaker 1: and twenty men. Nopea also discussed the matter with one
Speaker 1: of Mustaf Alita's attendants, a man named Dlip, who was
Speaker 1: displeased that their guests were being betrayed, so he thought
Speaker 1: Delippe might be on his side. Uh and Delipe also
Speaker 1: wanted to work this situation to his own advantage and benefit.
Speaker 1: According to Nopa's memoirs, he and Elipe discussed three possible
Speaker 1: ways this whole situation could go. Quote One was that
Speaker 1: Mustaf Alita would demand his ten thousand pounds my Albanian
Speaker 1: friends and Turkish troops would arrive, Lita's family lineage would
Speaker 1: be dishonored, and everyone would do massacred. The second possibility
Speaker 1: was that Mustaf Alita would demand a bimbosh lik position
Speaker 1: for my release. In this case, I would try to
Speaker 1: calm down my friends and would endeavor to keep Turkish
Speaker 1: troops out of Kali's and negotiate with the authorities. The
Speaker 1: end result in this event was unclear. The third variant
Speaker 1: was that mustaf Alita would take me to prisonon and
Speaker 1: turn me in as a spy. He would thus be
Speaker 1: amnestied by the government, and I would support his request
Speaker 1: for bambush leak. Yeah. Also for clarity, that first option
Speaker 1: where everyone would be massacred, he was including himself and
Speaker 1: Badges in it. He was like, if this goes down,
Speaker 1: we're all going to die. But maybe we can work
Speaker 1: out one of these other options. So for a little
Speaker 1: bit of additional clarity, a bambush leak is a military
Speaker 1: position roughly akin to that of an army major. Delip
Speaker 1: agreed to take these three possible scenarios to mustaf Alita
Speaker 1: to consider, and even as they negotiated after this with
Speaker 1: mustaf Alita and his men from Nopcha and bajes Doda
Speaker 1: were making backup plans in case the talks broke down,
Speaker 1: including hiding a razor under a rug with the intention
Speaker 1: of killing a guard and escaping out the window using
Speaker 1: sheets and carpets to shimmy down from the high floor.
Speaker 1: So upon hearing these three options at first, mustaf Alita
Speaker 1: told his captives that he had captured them basically as
Speaker 1: a joke to see if they were weak, and he
Speaker 1: said that they could go free, but Nopcha thought that
Speaker 1: this was a trap, but he did not accept the offer.
Speaker 1: The baron once again offered to campaign for the robber
Speaker 1: to get his military position if he would turn him
Speaker 1: over to the Turkish government as a spy, and Mustafilita agreed.
Speaker 1: So as they rode into the city of preets, m
Speaker 1: Mustafilita claimed that he had found Noche in disguise as
Speaker 1: a local man along the trail and had captured this
Speaker 1: spy to bring him to the proper authorities. Nopcha was
Speaker 1: put into a prison cell, which he had been counting
Speaker 1: on to separate him from his captor, and meanwhile, Bajazid
Speaker 1: was also taken to preets Ran, but was released per
Speaker 1: the terms of their agreement, and he was able to
Speaker 1: get a note written by Nocha to the consulate there,
Speaker 1: and then the consulate sent help. Before long this whole
Speaker 1: affair was over, mustaf Alita realized that he had been
Speaker 1: outsmarted and headed back to his own Territory's father had
Speaker 1: gotten word of the kidnapping and had shown up with
Speaker 1: a small army of men planning to kill Mustaflita, but
Speaker 1: his son and Noche convinced him that he and his
Speaker 1: men could stand down. During their travels, Franz became well
Speaker 1: known in the various areas they visited. He built up
Speaker 1: connections and friendships there, and he became fluent in several
Speaker 1: different Albanian dialects. He became so invested in the fate
Speaker 1: of Albania that he supported the idea of a rebellion
Speaker 1: against the young Turks, and he actually saw himself as
Speaker 1: the Albanians potential leader in such a war effort. There
Speaker 1: is obviously a little bit of a white savior complex
Speaker 1: and play there, but he also felt he knew more
Speaker 1: about warfare and the people they might be meeting than
Speaker 1: anybody else. In nine thirteen, the Albanian Congress of Trieste
Speaker 1: was organized. From February to March. Six delegates from the
Speaker 1: various tribes of Albania came to discuss their future as
Speaker 1: an independent nation and to petition the great powers to
Speaker 1: recognize their status. This event and the politics surrounding it
Speaker 1: could be its whole own subject, but as it relates
Speaker 1: to Baron France Nosha, the great powers of the time,
Speaker 1: which were off Trea, Hungary, the United Kingdom, France, Germany,
Speaker 1: Russia and Italy all had in mind that they would
Speaker 1: install a European as king, and Nopcha suggested himself for
Speaker 1: the job, feeling that he knew more about the area
Speaker 1: and its people than any other aristocrat that might be
Speaker 1: installed in a position of leadership. And indeed he really
Speaker 1: was recognized as the most knowledgeable candidate, both by people
Speaker 1: in Albania and by the rest of the Assembly. But
Speaker 1: instead Germany's Prince Wilhelm A Vid was established as monarch,
Speaker 1: and at that point Nopecha declared that his Albania was dead.
Speaker 1: After this this appointment, Nopcha faced a whole different hurdle,
Speaker 1: and that was the loss of his family fortune. During
Speaker 1: World War One, he had resumed his spy work for
Speaker 1: Austria Hungary and he had run guns to northern Albanian tribes.
Speaker 1: He had even headed up in an Albanian division, but
Speaker 1: he was often really frustrated at how the government was
Speaker 1: handling things like occupation of Albanian territories. The Austro Hungarian
Speaker 1: Empire collapsed in nineteen eighteen and Nopia's homeland became part
Speaker 1: of Romania, with that point, his family estate was no
Speaker 1: longer his property. And we're going to talk about the
Speaker 1: last part of Franz Nopja's life in a moment. The
Speaker 1: first we will take another quick sponsor break. Hey, so
Speaker 1: as we come back, I just want to remind you
Speaker 1: that if you uh he did our warning at the
Speaker 1: top of the episode about some violence that's coming up
Speaker 1: and you do not wish to hear it, this would
Speaker 1: be a good time to check out and we bid
Speaker 1: you a jia um. But getting back to Franz Nopcha.
Speaker 1: While paleontology was becoming a more established science at this point,
Speaker 1: uh as a self taught scientist with a reputation for
Speaker 1: being kind of eccentric and even rude. It was pretty
Speaker 1: difficult for the baron, who at this point, you remember,
Speaker 1: had lost his fortune to make connections into the field
Speaker 1: that he had in some ways helped a pioneer. In April,
Speaker 1: was offered the position of director at the Royal Hungarian
Speaker 1: Institute of Geology. He worked there until November night. He
Speaker 1: reorganized the institute, which was a move that was seen
Speaker 1: as a success, but he was never really happy there
Speaker 1: and his health was suffering. At one point he was
Speaker 1: in bed for an entire year. He wrote extensively in
Speaker 1: his three years with the institute, though he covered paleontology, geography,
Speaker 1: and ethnology along with other subjects. In total, he wrote
Speaker 1: almost two hundred different works, and roughly a quarter of
Speaker 1: them were about Albania and its people and no just
Speaker 1: health continued to decline in He gave the opening remarks
Speaker 1: at a Paleontological Society conference that he had invited to
Speaker 1: come to Budapest, but he was so weak at that
Speaker 1: point that he had to give his lecture from a wheelchair,
Speaker 1: and in his mind he believed that his career was
Speaker 1: basically over and that his lecture would likely be his
Speaker 1: last work. It was not. He continued to write a
Speaker 1: great deal in the next several years, but he resigned
Speaker 1: from his job just a few months later, and he
Speaker 1: and Bajasid first took a motorcycle tour of your up
Speaker 1: starting in Italy until they ran out of money, and
Speaker 1: then they moved to Vienna. On April three, Franz Nope
Speaker 1: Shaw was living in an apartment in Vienna with Doda,
Speaker 1: and they had been living there together since he retired
Speaker 1: from his job at the Geological Institute and that day,
Speaker 1: while Bo was asleep, Nope just sent the housekeeper away
Speaker 1: on an errand, and then he shot his sleeping companion
Speaker 1: and then himself, killing both of them. And nopeja uh.
Speaker 1: This was clearly something he had been planning to do,
Speaker 1: because he left behind a lot of envelopes for people
Speaker 1: like lawyers and whatnot. But he also left behind a
Speaker 1: note for the police and it read quote, the motive
Speaker 1: for my suicide is a nervous breakdown. The reason that
Speaker 1: I shot my longtime friend and secretary Mr bajes Elma's
Speaker 1: Doda in his sleep without his suspecting is that I
Speaker 1: do not wish to leave him behind, sick in misery
Speaker 1: and without a penny, because he would have suffered too much.
Speaker 1: I wish to be cremated. This entire incident was to
Speaker 1: scribed in detail in Vienna's new Free Press, all the
Speaker 1: way down to autopsy details and Nopesa's note, and it
Speaker 1: ran under the unfortunate and sensational headline quote bloody drama
Speaker 1: in the singer Strauss scholar commits murder and suicide. Quickly,
Speaker 1: a lot of the scholarly work that Nopcha and Doda
Speaker 1: had done was eclipsed by the dramatic story of their death,
Speaker 1: and the two men were actually buried across the street
Speaker 1: from one another. Doda was buried in a Muslim section
Speaker 1: of one of Vienna's cemeteries, and Noa's cremated remains were
Speaker 1: interred in a vault, and their burials were coordinated so
Speaker 1: that the two were placed in their final resting places
Speaker 1: at exactly the same time. While Nopha had left a
Speaker 1: list of his unpublished work with a colleague named Norbert Yokel,
Speaker 1: along with instructions about who to contact to have them published,
Speaker 1: that publication didn't happen initially. There were financial issues, and
Speaker 1: Jokol held onto the works but was killed by Nazis
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen forties. The remaining manuscripts are in
Speaker 1: the aust In National Library, but some of what's believed
Speaker 1: to have been his most comprehensive writing on Albania has
Speaker 1: been lost. Yeah, a lot of his fossil work was
Speaker 1: actually retained because before his death he had sold a
Speaker 1: lot of it too, I think the British Museum, so
Speaker 1: it's still intact most of that research, but a lot
Speaker 1: of his Albanian work that people think is probably some
Speaker 1: of the most important is completely am i A. We
Speaker 1: have no idea where it ended up. Throughout his life,
Speaker 1: the passionate and obsessive Franz Noche had dealt with health
Speaker 1: issues which are a little bit nebulous in terms of
Speaker 1: what we actually know about them. He was prolific in
Speaker 1: his work, but his efforts were often interrupted throughout his
Speaker 1: life by what he called shattered nerves. And his mother
Speaker 1: told people at various times, even when he was an adult,
Speaker 1: like she would kind of write notes to excuse him
Speaker 1: from things, saying that he had a recurring illness, but
Speaker 1: she never really gave details about them. Even in his
Speaker 1: own memoirs um he doesn't really detail his personal thoughts
Speaker 1: or feelings. It's all kind of like, here the things
Speaker 1: that happened, but he doesn't really discuss the personal aspects
Speaker 1: of those those experiences at all. That's a consequence. It's
Speaker 1: still something of a struggle for historians to really get
Speaker 1: a sense of what no Show was like as a person.
Speaker 1: Even his colleagues at the time described him as enigmatic
Speaker 1: and hard to read. He was really passionate about his work,
Speaker 1: and he could be generous with his research. He didn't
Speaker 1: seem like he was seeking fame, but he did think
Speaker 1: he was way ahead of most other people, and he
Speaker 1: was prone to mood swings which could make him very
Speaker 1: unkind to the people around him. Yeah, there have been
Speaker 1: a lot of theories put forth about what exactly was
Speaker 1: was his problem in terms of mental health, but those
Speaker 1: are always tricky, as we've discussed many times on the show,
Speaker 1: like to diagnose somebody postmortem is a whole messy thing,
Speaker 1: particularly for someone who's just um, you know, doing a
Speaker 1: casual assessment from a historical standpoint, rather than someone who's
Speaker 1: actually trained in psychology. Um. But in a paper on
Speaker 1: Noes's work written by David B. Whit Shample and Wolf
Speaker 1: ernst Rife, the writers make a really nice point about
Speaker 1: how privilege and a lack of formal education kind of
Speaker 1: robbed Nopcha of his ability to turn a critical eye
Speaker 1: to his own work and perhaps consequently learned to moderate
Speaker 1: his behavior. They wrote, quote, yet, to characterize Nopche as
Speaker 1: arrogant is to overlook the obvious problem of combining in
Speaker 1: one person a high level of intelligence and creativity not
Speaker 1: often tempered with the ability of self criticism. Nopcha studies
Speaker 1: in tectonic geology evolutionary biology, paleo biogeography, and sexual dimorphism
Speaker 1: prove his ability to intelligently discover problems and solve them
Speaker 1: in remarkable ways. The inability to criticize his own work
Speaker 1: acted both against and for Nopcha. Against because of outlandish
Speaker 1: and easily falsified ideas which he presented on paper, and
Speaker 1: four because he excelled at assembling disparate ideas into new frameworks.
Speaker 1: A lot of his ideas that were met with skepticism
Speaker 1: while he was living have come to be pretty wide
Speaker 1: we accepted in the years since his death. For example,
Speaker 1: his idea that the area known as Hotzig had been
Speaker 1: an island during the Cretaceous period has been supported by
Speaker 1: additional research over the years. His island theory about limited
Speaker 1: resources causing dwarfism and species is now known as the
Speaker 1: Island rule, although it's credited and it's more formally detailed
Speaker 1: form as Foster's rule, which is named for a biologist J.
Speaker 1: Bristol Foster, who wrote a paper establishing the idea in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four. And Social Castle, the family home of Franzinopsha,
Speaker 1: has fallen into ruin, and it has through historical conservation
Speaker 1: efforts been placed on a list of cultural heritage sites
Speaker 1: in Romania with the intent that the government will provide
Speaker 1: financial support for restoration and upkeep, although those funds have
Speaker 1: actually been slow to materialize, so it is still in
Speaker 1: a pretty sad state of disrepair at this point. Do
Speaker 1: you have some listener mail to take us out today?
Speaker 1: I do, um, and it is not sad or scary
Speaker 1: at all. It is from our listener, David, and I
Speaker 1: thought it would be fun to do a fun email
Speaker 1: after what it's kind of a sad end to an
Speaker 1: interesting life, he writes, High ladies, I finally had to
Speaker 1: email you, not because I have some great moment to
Speaker 1: share or some additional point to add to one of
Speaker 1: your great episodes, though someday I hope I get that chance.
Speaker 1: I am now one of your listeners who have listened
Speaker 1: to the entire library. Is there a club for this?
Speaker 1: The sad thing about doing that is now I have
Speaker 1: to wait for the next episode. I spent the last
Speaker 1: two years listening to your podcast only. I guess I
Speaker 1: can now add some more. The others will be happy.
Speaker 1: I look forward to maybe seeing one of your live
Speaker 1: shows when the opportunity arises. I hope you to do.
Speaker 1: I wanted to share a few points about your podcast
Speaker 1: that maybe you already know, but I thought they were interesting,
Speaker 1: at least to me. One, it is amazing how close
Speaker 1: we may have come to the history stories you've told.
Speaker 1: Being born in nineteen sixty three, I may have been
Speaker 1: alive just after a person died, or just before an
Speaker 1: event or some similar time issue. Two. I saw the
Speaker 1: growth changes length of your whole show. Very nice. Three.
Speaker 1: I am always amazed at your research skill. I envy
Speaker 1: you in that ability. I will laugh and interject my
Speaker 1: own thing of like. I don't know, I feel sloppy
Speaker 1: about it sometimes. For I love your effort to show
Speaker 1: people the history of some political issues, especially after this
Speaker 1: past presidential election. It's amazing as to how similar some
Speaker 1: issues have been throughout history racism, religion, sexism, etcetera. I
Speaker 1: really hope your podcast open some eyes. But either way,
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. Uh. And then he gives us a
Speaker 1: little request, a couple of requests actually, and he says,
Speaker 1: thanks again for a wonderful podcast in the many hours
Speaker 1: of enjoyment you provide. Okay, so um, I did not
Speaker 1: read this for self aggrandizement, even though it is all lovely,
Speaker 1: lovely compliments. But his thing about a club gave me
Speaker 1: an idea which we will get to work on, which
Speaker 1: is that we should have a T shirt for me
Speaker 1: people that people can get in our our tea public
Speaker 1: store that says like I listened to them all or something.
Speaker 1: So we'll work with designers and get that figured out.
Speaker 1: But it seems like such an obvious thing and I
Speaker 1: hadn't thought about it, So thank you David are giving
Speaker 1: us that idea. If you would like to write to us,
Speaker 1: you can do so at History podcast at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. You can also find us everywhere on
Speaker 1: social media as Missed in History, and you can go
Speaker 1: to our website missed in History dot com, where you
Speaker 1: will find every episode of the show that's ever existed.
Speaker 1: It's very exciting times. YouTube like David can listen to
Speaker 1: every single one. Uh. If you would like to subscribe
Speaker 1: to the podcast we support you in this plan, you
Speaker 1: can do that on the I Heart Radio app, at
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Stuff you
Speaker 1: Missed in History Class is a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.