Grossinger János Christian

* Komárom, September 25, 1728 – † Komárom, January 2, 1803 / Jesuit priest, naturalist ; ; His father was a master butcher in Komárom and at one time a senator of the city. The boy began his schooling in his hometown, moved to Nagyszombat at the age of 13, and then completed his secondary school studies in Trenčín. He entered the Jesuit order in 1745 and lectured on classical philology and philosophy in Ungvárot from 1746 to 1748. He completed his university studies in Graz and Nagyszombat. He was already interested in the natural conditions of the country at a young age, and from 1743 he traveled to many regions of the country and during his teaching career in Győr he also visited Lake Balaton and Lake Velence. He taught for a long time in Nagyszombat (1762–1769), from where he moved to Košice, where he was the director of the boarding school in 1769–1770. From Košice he was transferred to Vienna, where he taught Greek and Hungarian at the Theresianum. He soon became the camp chaplain of the Haller Regiment stationed in Italy and was able to get to know the natural conditions there in Cremona, Milan and Mantua. In the following years, he visited many places in Hungary with his regiment, even reaching Partium and Transylvania. He consciously collected botanical, zoological and mineralogical material, having decided to prepare a large-scale work, which was intended to be a natural history description of Hungary. For this task, he needed a calmer position, so from 1780 he became the pastor of Óvár in Komárom. He worked continuously on the work in progress, while making smaller and larger trips to collect new material. Probably as a result of the 1783 Komárom earthquake, his first published work listed the earthquakes in Hungary from 1040 to 1783. The first part of the monumental work, planned for nine volumes, deals with zoology in general, on 591 pages (Universa historia physica regni Hungariae secundum tria regna naturae digesta, 1793). The second volume lists birds on 462 pages. Since he managed to win barely 120 subscribers, these voluminous works must have consumed a lot of his money, which also explains why only five of the planned volumes were published (the third on fish, amphibians and reptiles – 400 pages, the fourth on insects – 416 pages, and the fifth, the first part of two volumes on plants – 344 pages). The sixth volume would have been the conclusion of the botanical section, the seventh volume a kind of geological landscape description (“oryctography”), the eighth volume mineralogy, and the ninth hydrology, i.e. water drawing. These remained in manuscript.