Andras Czirbesz

* Szepesváralja, 11 September 1732 – Igló, 12 January 1813  Lutheran pastor, ; city senator, mineralogist, historian ; ; Although he was born in nearby Szepesváralja, he was a Lutheran pastor in Igló from the age of 25 (from 1757), and later, from 1791, a senator of the 13 towns of Spišské. In addition to his public work, he was involved in the investigation of the natural conditions of the region, especially the Tatra Mountains, and was also interested in minerals, various medicinal plants, and mines. He drew a lot of data from earlier works, especially from the descriptions of the two Buchholzs: György Buchholtz elder (Kisszeben) and György Buchholtz junior (Késmárk), which he also included in his work entitled Kurzgefasste Beschreibung des karpathischen Gebirges, published in Vienna in 1772. On August 3, 1773, he climbed the Krivan peak and was the first to document this venture in written form (Beschreibung einer karpathischen Bergreise, auf den so genannten Kriwan, 1773), although he was not the first to climb the 2494 m high peak. He is credited with bringing the High Tatras to the attention of foreigners, and already in the last decades of the 18th century, several authors (Fichtel, 1788, Hacquet, 1791–1794, Townson, 1797) dealt with the region in detail.