![Anatole von Hügel plaque](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Anatole_von_H%C3%BCgel_plaque.jpg)
Anatole von Hügel (29 September 1854, in
Florence
Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico an ...
– 15 August 1928, in
Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...
) was the second son of the Austrian nobleman
Charles von Hügel
Charles von Hügel (born Carl Alexander Anselm Baron von Hügel; 25 April 1795 – 2 June 1870), sometimes spelt in English Huegel, was an Austrian nobleman, army officer, diplomat, botanist, and explorer, now primarily remembered for his tra ...
and his Scottish wife Elizabeth Farquharson. His elder brother was
Friedrich von Hügel
Friedrich von Hügel (born ''Friedrich Maria Aloys Franz Karl Freiherr von Hügel'', usually known as ''Baron von Hügel''; 5 May 1852 – 27 January 1925) was an influential Austrian Catholic layman, religious writer, and Christian apologist. Al ...
and his sister was
Pauline von Hügel
Baroness Pauline Marie Marguerite Isabelle von Hügel (3 November 1858 – 29 March 1901) was an Italian-born Austrian aristocrat and a British religious writer, named after Pauline von Metternich. Born into a life of courtly opulence and high soc ...
.
His family moved to England in 1867 after his father's retirement, and he was educated at
Stonyhurst College
Stonyhurst College is a co-educational Catholic Church, Roman Catholic independent school, adhering to the Society of Jesus, Jesuit tradition, on the Stonyhurst, Stonyhurst Estate, Lancashire, England. It occupies a Grade I listed building. Th ...
. From 1874 to 1878 he collected natural history specimens in
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
,
New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...
,
Fiji
Fiji ( , ,; fj, Viti, ; Fiji Hindi: फ़िजी, ''Fijī''), officially the Republic of Fiji, is an island country in Melanesia, part of Oceania in the South Pacific Ocean. It lies about north-northeast of New Zealand. Fiji consists ...
,
Samoa
Samoa, officially the Independent State of Samoa; sm, Sāmoa, and until 1997 known as Western Samoa, is a Polynesian island country consisting of two main islands (Savai'i and Upolu); two smaller, inhabited islands (Manono Island, Manono an ...
, and
Java
Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...
. He became an authority of Fiji, after his lengthy travels in the practically unknown interior of
Viti Levu
Viti Levu (pronounced ) is the largest island in the Republic of Fiji. It is the site of the nation's capital, Suva, and home to a large majority of Fiji's population.
Geology
Fiji lies in a tectonically complex area between the Australian P ...
to record the original Fijian culture before the British colonization.
In 1880 he married Eliza Margaret Froude, daughter of
William Froude
William Froude (; 28 November 1810 in Devon – 4 May 1879 in Simonstown, South Africa) was an English engineer, hydrodynamicist and naval architect. He was the first to formulate reliable laws for the resistance that water offers to ships (suc ...
and in 1883 he became the first curator of the
. He remained curator until 1921, raising funds for the new building. In 1889 he was admitted to
Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by Henry VIII, King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge ...
and received an MA. Hügel was founder and first president (1895 to 1922) of the Cambridge University Catholic Association, and would go on to co-found
St Edmund's College, Cambridge
St Edmund's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in England. Founded in 1896, it is the second-oldest of the four Cambridge colleges oriented to mature students, which accept only students reading for postgraduate degr ...
with
Henry Fitzalan-Howard, 15th Duke of Norfolk
Henry Fitzalan-Howard, 15th Duke of Norfolk, (27 December 184711 February 1917), styled Lord Maltravers until 1856 and Earl of Arundel and Surrey between 1856 and 1860, was a British Unionist politician and philanthropist. He served as Postmas ...
. There is a memorial plaque to Baron Anatole von Hügel on the wall in the St John Fisher chapel of the Catholic Church in Cambridge (Our Lady & English Martyrs, Lensfield Road, Cambridge). He was buried in Cambridge Cemetery on 20 August 1928, as was his wife, a member of the Cambridge
Ladies Dining Society
The Ladies Dining Society was a private women's dining and discussion club, based at Cambridge University. It was founded in 1890 by the author Louise Creighton and the women's activist Kathleen Lyttelton. Its members, most of whom were marr ...
with 11 other members.
Hügel privately published a biography of his father in 1903.
[''Charles von Hügel'': April 25, 1795 - June 2, 1870. Cambridge. 1903.]
References
*''The Fiji Journals of Baron Anatole Von Hugel 1875-1877'', Roth, Jane and Steven Hooper (eds.), Suva: Fiji Museum in association with Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology, 1990
*''Baron Anatole von Hugel'', Obituary by A. C. Haddon & Alfred P. Maudslay in ''Man'', Vol. 28 pp 169–171 (Oct. 1928)
'Anatole von Hugel, Baron'', Peter W. Allott in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
External links
biographical sketchThe Von Hügel Institute. St Edmund's College, Cambridge
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hugel, Anatole Von
1854 births
1928 deaths
Nobility from Florence
Austrian anthropologists
History of Fiji
Barons of Austria
Austrian Roman Catholics
Scottish Roman Catholics
Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge
Fellows of St Edmund's College, Cambridge
Academics of the University of Cambridge
Catholic Church in Cambridge
Austrian naturalists
British expatriates in Fiji
Austro-Hungarian emigrants to the United Kingdom
Scottish people of Austrian descent
Anatole
Founders of colleges of the University of Cambridge