Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
the gap” between instrumental and human observations would depend on
smooth communication between seismologists and the public. To this end,
in 1901 Belar founded the monthly journal
Die Erdbebenwarte,
a unique
forum that addressed both expert and popular audiences. It covered the lat-
est research in seismological geophysics and geology as well as issues of seis-
mic safety. Belar also lectured frequently to popular audiences in Ljubljana
and elsewhere in the monarchy, and he served as a correspondent for news-
papers in vienna, Berlin, London, and new York.
58
He thus helped forge a
seismological language that linked scientists, citizens, and instruments.
Imperial Science
Just ten days after the Ljubljana earthquake, the Academy of sciences in
vienna ruled to establish a special commission for the “more intensive
study of seismic phenomena in the Austrian lands.” The initial form of the
earthquake Commission remained significantly decentralized: each crown
land had one reporter responsible for recruiting observers; mailing, collect-
ing, and compiling questionnaires; and investigating significant seismic
events within his province. There was thus no direct contact between the
commissioners in vienna and the volunteer observers.
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In practice, this
scheme was further decentralized by the provision of one reporter each for
the German- and Czech-speaking regions of Bohemia and the German- and
Italian-speaking regions of Tyrol. According to Habsburg logic, these were
geographical rather than social divisions, meaning that each reporter was
still required to be bilingual. The commission's second task, that of collect-
ing historical information on past quakes, was to be organized according to
“appropriate regional sections, so for example the Alps, the sudetenland,
and the Karst region.”
60
This too proved tricky to implement. The problem
was, at core, the familiar conflict between territorial and linguistic divisions
of the monarchy. earthquake observing was uniquely susceptible to this
tension, dealing as it did directly with both the land and with people's per-
ceptions of the land.
For instance, the Czech-Polish physicist václac/Waclaw/Wenzel Láska
found that the preparation of a treatise on “The earthquakes of Poland” was
problematic. “I have called my project 'The earthquakes of Poland,' but more
accurate would be 'The earthquakes in the Polish Historical sources,' because
in this I did not by any means think of political, but rather of historical bor-
ders, and those not so much of the land as of the sources.” Poland, of course,
was not a political entity at this time, having been swallowed by neighboring
states over the previous century and a half. Although the Austrian kaiser was
