Travels in the Balkans

The Austro-Hungarian aristocrat of Transylvanian origin, Baron Franz Nopcsa (1877-1933), was one of the most adventuresome travelers and scholars of south-eastern Europe in the early decades of the twentieth century. He was also a paleontologist of renown and a noted geologist of the Balkan Peninsula: many of his assumptions have been confirmed by science.

The Memoirs of this fascinating figure of Albanian and Balkan scholarship deal mainly with his travels in the Balkans, and specifically in the remote and wild mountains of northern Albania, in the years from 1903 to 1914. They thus cover the period of Ottoman Rule, the Balkan Wars and the outbreak of the First World War. The memoirs contain indirect references to his homosexuality. The Introduction tells about Nopcsa's tragic death: he killed his companion then himself.