0:15

Hello and welcome to Season 7, Episode 9

0:18

of Bad Gays, a podcast all about evil

0:20

and complicated queer people in history. My name's

0:22

Hugh Lemme, I'm a writer and author. And

0:24

I'm Ben Miller, a writer, researcher, and member

0:27

of the board of the Schfullus Museum in

0:29

Berlin. So, last week we

0:31

covered the Sultan of the Delhi

0:33

Sultanate, Khubutin Mubarak Shah. Who are we talking

0:35

about this week, Ben? Well,

0:38

today's subject had a multi-hyphenate

0:40

name and a multi-hyphenate resume.

0:43

In his 55 years of life, he

0:45

was an adventurer, a geologist, a

0:47

spy, a dinosaur scientist,

0:50

one of the founders of paleobiology,

0:52

the world's first airplane hijacker, a

0:55

founder of the field of Albanian studies, a

0:58

cosplay artist, and a murderer. They

1:01

don't make men like they used

1:03

to. They don't. This is another

1:05

entry in our eccentric aristocrat series.

1:07

Born in 1877 in Transylvania, the

1:09

Baron – here's a name for

1:11

you – Franz Knopscher von Feljor

1:14

Shilvash. Try

1:17

and say that again. Franz Knopscher

1:19

von Feljor Shilvash. Impressive. He

1:22

may have been, except perhaps as

1:24

a pub quiz answer, lost to

1:26

history, but in his lifetime he

1:28

had an outsized impact on several

1:30

scientific disciplines, the politics of several

1:32

European nations and nationalisms, and unfortunately

1:34

the long-time secretary who he lived

1:36

with until a murder-suicide ended both

1:38

of their lives. Ding, ding, ding.

1:40

Long-time secretary-elect. Exactly. So,

1:43

Robert Elsie translates and reproduces the following

1:45

April 1933 article from the Viennese

1:48

newspaper, the Neue Frei Oppressor. As

1:52

we have already reported, the 55-year-old

1:54

lecturer Baron Franz Knopscher shot his

1:56

long-time secretary. Ding,

2:00

ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding,

2:02

ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, shot

2:05

his long-time secretary, the 45-year-old Albanian Bayezid

2:07

Elmaj Doda, yesterday morning in his fourth-story

2:09

apartment in house number one of Zingarstrasse

2:11

12, and then committed suicide at

2:13

the desk of his study by shooting himself through the

2:15

mouth. Oh my god. Nopsja seems

2:17

to have prepared the deed carefully. A

2:20

number of sealed messages of farewell were

2:22

found, as were a sealed will

2:24

addressed to a Viennese lawyer and several other

2:26

documents. That material motives

2:28

may also have been involved can be deduced

2:31

not only from testimony that his maid

2:33

had not received her salary for four

2:35

months, but also from the

2:37

fact that Nopsja, who was devoted to

2:39

his books and collections, had been planning

2:41

to sell off his extensive library containing

2:43

many a unique volume. That's

2:46

like a classic male murder-suricide thing of, you

2:48

know, running out of money. Exactly.

2:52

Kill your partner and kill yourself. It is, and

2:54

that's what he does. So the man whose life

2:56

would end in such notoriety was born on May

2:58

3rd of 1877 at the family estate

3:01

in Zaksal in Transylania. His

3:05

father, Alexias, had fought against Mexican

3:07

independence in the imperial army and

3:09

later became an administrator at the

3:11

Hungarian royal opera in Budapest. His

3:14

uncle and godfather was a member of the

3:16

court of the Empress Elizabeth, and

3:18

so France was schooled in Vienna at

3:20

the Maria Theresaanum, which was one of

3:22

the premier elite schools of the Austro-Hungarian

3:25

Empire. When

3:27

he was 18, his sister, Ilona, made a

3:29

discovery that changed his life. She

3:31

was out for a walk by a river near

3:33

the family estate, and she saw an

3:35

unusual skull, and she decided to bring it home.

3:39

Now this happenstance discovery proved to

3:41

be of major scientific importance. France

3:44

looked through books available to him and was unable

3:46

to find a match for the skull, and

3:49

so he sent the skull to

3:51

a paleontologist by the name of,

3:53

get this, Dr. Seuss. Professor

3:57

Edouard Seuss, To be exact.

4:00

At the University of Vienna, or who

4:02

was one of the world's leading paleontologists.

4:05

And Dr. Seuss wrote friends back and

4:07

told him that this was very interesting

4:10

and he should sort of figure out

4:12

what this was on his own and

4:14

if he wanted to come study with

4:16

him he could. So this auspicious start

4:19

began his career in paleontology. Friends became

4:21

a pupil of Dr. Seuss and he

4:23

began to study geology says he allergy

4:25

anatomy and neurology as part of his

4:28

complete paleontological education. Paint is to the

4:30

Us the study of dinosaur dinosaurs. Returning

4:32

to the site where alone I had

4:34

found the fossil. France began more

4:37

of an. Extensive.

4:39

Excavations and discovered more fossils and

4:41

he pioneered what was then a

4:43

new technique which was comparing fossils

4:46

to living animals to understand what

4:48

the missing pieces the soft tissue

4:50

that doesn't get fossilized might have

4:52

looked like season. Think about the

4:54

ways that soft tissue like muscle

4:56

and tendon lay on and related

4:59

to preserve bones by looking at

5:01

how the bones are similar to

5:03

bone structure that we see now,

5:05

thinking about how things might have

5:07

looked. So the age

5:10

of twenty two he delivered his first

5:12

public lecture in Vienna and there he

5:14

announced his new discovery which was what

5:16

the score was. the tell matters or

5:19

s or the swamp lizard which was

5:21

aside meter long and two meter tall

5:23

duckbilled herbivore. Klaus. So.

5:26

This and some other discoveries made not

5:28

show one of the world's foremost paleontologists.

5:31

He was analytically. As I said, ahead

5:33

of his time he analyzed crocodile bones

5:35

and lifted bird behavior for clues as

5:38

to how dinosaurs might have parenthood. He

5:41

insulted scholars. his work he thought was

5:43

inferior and that was most scholars am

5:45

and he got away with it because

5:47

a he could sell finance his own

5:50

research, am and be his own work

5:52

was quite brilliant. One.

5:54

crucial paleontological argument that not sure

5:56

made and one where he ended

5:58

up being syndicated after his death

6:00

had to do with smaller dinosaurs.

6:04

Dinosaur finds until this point

6:06

had tended to be spectacularly

6:08

large, like vast Apatosauruses, you

6:11

know the smallest things the size of a horse

6:13

and a lot of what Napsha found was much

6:15

smaller the size of a crocodile or even smaller

6:17

than that. A lot

6:19

of people were convinced at this point

6:21

that all smaller dinosaurs were juveniles. His

6:25

proposition was that there was actually a

6:27

lot more size diversity than anyone knew

6:30

and he was able to prove this theory

6:32

or to test this theory by cutting

6:34

slices out of fossilized bones and examining

6:37

their cell structure under a microscope and

6:39

sure enough the animals he found had

6:42

bone structures consistent with maturity rather

6:44

than juvenile. In other words they were

6:46

adult small dinosaurs not baby big

6:48

dinosaurs. He's really

6:50

smart when it comes to good paleontologists.

6:55

And this field of dinosaur bone dating

6:57

became known as paleo-histology and Napsha was

6:59

one of that field's pioneers. He

7:02

drove forward the art and science of

7:04

making broad based arguments about animal behavior

7:07

from relatively small amounts of bone. David

7:11

Weisshampel who's a paleontologist at Johns

7:13

Hopkins University that was quoted in

7:15

a Smithsonian Magazine article about Napsha

7:17

thusly, quote, islands

7:20

are unique places where biology gets a free

7:22

hand. Large animals tend to

7:24

get smaller, for example the dwarf elephants of

7:27

Malta and hippos in the Mediterranean and

7:29

small animals tend to get larger like

7:31

Komodo dragons, boas and tortoises in the

7:33

Galapagos, end quote. Napsha

7:36

realized that using geological study that

7:38

the area of Transylvania where he

7:40

was doing his digs had been

7:42

at the time that these fossils

7:44

were created an island. And

7:46

so his theory was he called it

7:48

island insularity that animals'

7:53

body sizes change

7:55

based on food availability and

7:57

predators on islands and

7:59

that is It's still something

8:02

that scientists talk about. They talk about now the,

8:04

quote, island rule. As

8:07

Paul Barrett puts it, he's a dinosaur researcher at

8:09

the Museum of Natural History in London, quote, if

8:12

you go to islands today, it's a well-known

8:14

phenomenon that some large animals have become smaller

8:16

and some small animals get larger. But

8:19

Napshah was the first person to make that

8:21

intellectual leap and to suggest that this process

8:23

could also be seen in the fossil record,

8:25

end quote. He

8:27

was also someone who pioneered

8:29

looking at sex differences in

8:31

dinosaurs, thinking maybe

8:34

that dinosaur specimens that were

8:36

different from one another, not only because they

8:38

were different species, which was

8:40

what most people thought at the time, but

8:42

that also two related seeming fossils

8:44

could represent different dinosaur sexes.

8:46

Right? Okay. He

8:49

also was a pioneer of the theory

8:51

that dinosaurs were like birds in that

8:53

they were social animals which cared for

8:56

their offspring while they grew up and

8:58

raised them. It

9:01

wasn't until the 1980s that the

9:03

field of paleontology moved towards what's

9:05

called the theory of parental care

9:07

in dinosaurs, a great name. But

9:11

Napshah was there in his work much,

9:13

much earlier. Now

9:16

Napshah's first great love, dinosaurs, led

9:18

him to his second great love.

9:21

You want to guess what it was? Flying?

9:25

Albania. So the study of

9:28

paleontology and his determination to bring

9:30

together various different kinds of available

9:32

sources, including geological

9:35

records to determine what kinds

9:37

of lives ancient dinosaurs had

9:39

lived, eventually brought him

9:41

to studying the geology of the

9:43

northern Balkans. It was

9:46

research into the tectonics of the

9:48

western Balkan mountains that first took

9:50

him to Albania. He

9:53

immediately became fascinated by the culture

9:55

of Albanian tribesmen and actually his

9:58

first boyfriend was another Transylvania. Count

10:00

named Louis Draskovic, who shared

10:02

his interest in Albanian rural

10:05

communities. Does

10:07

he, you know, have an interest in Albanian rural communities? Is

10:10

he a Transylvanian Count? With

10:12

an interest in Albanian rural communities. Now

10:16

for an Austria-Hungarian of its time,

10:18

Albania was perceived

10:20

as a wild frontier. It

10:23

served as the border between Austria-Hungary

10:25

and the Ottoman Empire, and its citizens

10:27

were both imperial subjects and also

10:29

Muslims, and their rural culture

10:31

made them an object of cultural

10:33

fascination. Gesim

10:36

Alpian, a scholar at the University

10:38

of Birmingham, argues that, quote, for

10:40

a student of dinosaurs, Napshas' initial

10:42

visits to the Balkans, and particularly

10:44

to Albania, were inspirational

10:46

and enlightening, mainly because Albania, especially

10:49

in its northern regions, seemed to

10:51

have frozen in time, hibernating for

10:54

centuries, with its, quote,

10:56

wild uncivilized landscape, laws and customs,

10:58

Albania and the Albanians must have

11:00

been, in Napshas' eyes, something of

11:03

a sleeping dinosaur, end quote. We

11:06

spoke a lot on this show about

11:09

bad gays becoming fascinated with peoples and

11:11

places that they thought were stuck backwards

11:13

in time. Perhaps

11:15

this was linked to sex radicals'

11:18

desire to identify places and times

11:20

where the kinds of sex gender

11:22

systems that constructed them as mentally

11:24

deficient or pathologically ill had been

11:26

different. This kind

11:28

of research could undermine modern sexual morality's

11:30

claims to be eternal, and

11:32

with it, that morality is a sticking power. If

11:35

things were once different, they might someday be

11:37

different again. And if

11:39

things were once different, if humans had not

11:41

always organized themselves into the same kind of

11:44

family units, then heterosexuality's claims

11:46

to eternal superiority could be

11:48

more effectively challenged. Beginning

11:52

in 1907, he began to

11:54

publish in the burgeoning field

11:56

of Albania studies, and given

11:58

the country's strategic location, this

12:00

studies with an imperial science dedicated

12:03

to cataloging and documenting the geography

12:05

and culture of that country. Very

12:07

useful. For that reason,

12:09

the imperial court ended up financing a lot

12:11

of his Albanian adventures. But

12:14

his aristocratic upbringing also helped if he didn't

12:16

get adventures paid for by the court.

12:18

There was always family wealth to fall back on.

12:22

Robert Elsie has translated Napcha's

12:24

diaries of Albanian travel. And

12:27

from the beginning, the diaries are characterized by

12:29

a dual attitude. On the one

12:32

hand, there's a sort of love

12:34

for the Albanian people and landscape. And

12:36

on the other hand, a lot of

12:38

dismissive commentary about political backwardness,

12:40

corruption, and violence. And like

12:42

so many primitive and ethnographers,

12:44

Napcha delivered his readers of

12:46

people ripe for colonization and

12:48

consumption and reform. To

12:52

quote from the diaries,

12:54

quote, reforms were constantly being introduced while

12:56

I was in Scopje. Nothing

12:58

characterizes the situation better than the fact

13:00

that despite all the reforms, an Albanian

13:03

placidly informed the valet, Shakir Pasha, that

13:05

he would gladly murder 10 men for

13:07

him. All he asked for in

13:10

exchange was a 10-shot Mauser pistol, end quote.

13:13

Now, as Gézio Malpian argues, the

13:15

memoirs, quote, abound in conceited and

13:17

often arrogant remarks about contemporary Albanians

13:20

who were trying hard to save

13:22

their country as the terminally ill

13:24

Ottoman Empire was finally dying, end

13:26

quote. Napcha's

13:29

travels to Albania were taking place in

13:31

a geopolitically tense and complicated time. Balkan

13:35

nationalisms and independence movements,

13:38

the same movements that would help spark the First

13:40

World War, were in high gear as he began

13:42

his journey. The Balkan

13:44

states were trapped in two plurinational

13:46

empires that were both in what

13:48

ultimately turned out to be terminal

13:50

decline, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire,

13:53

neither of which would outlive the First World

13:55

War. Before the

13:57

First Balkan War, which occurred just before the First World War.

14:00

World War, independent Montenegro

14:02

and Serbia served as buffers

14:04

between an Austria-Hungary that included

14:06

present-day Croatia and an

14:09

Ottoman Empire that included major portions

14:11

of contemporary Bosnia and Albania. Assembled

14:15

and competing nationalisms began to unify

14:17

under the banner of defeating the

14:19

Ottomans. And so before the First

14:21

World War came the Balkan Wars of 1912 to 1914 in which

14:23

the Balkan League

14:27

of National Movements overthrew Ottoman rule

14:29

in the Balkans. Now

14:32

Franz Knopfscher ends

14:35

up earning a PhD in geology

14:37

in 1903 by mapping his family

14:40

estate but at this

14:42

time he was also beginning to suffer

14:44

from what was at the time a

14:46

somewhat mysterious condition. Nowadays

14:48

it seems like we might

14:51

think of it as being related to

14:53

bipolar based on the information that's available.

14:55

It would go through periods

14:57

of intense productivity and self-confidence

15:00

and these would then be followed by

15:02

periods of with depression, of withdrawal from

15:05

social contacts, from intellectual work and

15:07

he referred to his own condition as

15:09

shattered nerves. And again

15:12

we're talking about a time when the vocabulary for

15:14

mental illness is very new and it's changing and

15:17

there's often both elite and popular

15:19

conceptions of mental illness as a

15:21

moral failure or a grotesquerie. And

15:24

there's a lot of risk of things

15:26

like incarceration, voluntary incarceration, things like that.

15:29

Exactly. Not that we've overcome all of this but

15:31

it's just important to keep that in mind. So

15:35

someone who was interested in geology definitely

15:37

had the ability to be useful in

15:39

a border region but Knopfscher's

15:41

interest in Albania began to take a

15:43

quite obsessive turn. He

15:45

started spending most of his time there

15:48

in 1906 and stayed until the 1914

15:50

outbreak of the First World

15:52

War and he spent

15:54

some of that time working as a

15:56

spy serving the Austro-Hungarian regime to

15:59

report on local... local nationalist movements. But

16:02

in 1906, he met a tall,

16:04

dark, and handsome young man who he

16:06

hired to be his private

16:09

secretary. Very nice. This

16:12

was Bayezid El-Majdodah, and

16:14

the two really seemed to have mutually hit it off.

16:17

Nupsha noted in a diary that Doda

16:20

was quote, the only person who has

16:22

truly loved me, end quote. And

16:24

for his part, he showed his regard

16:27

by naming a species of turtle after

16:29

Doda. I guess that's what you get

16:31

when scientists love you. So

16:34

they end up crossing the

16:36

Albanian Alps over and over again, tooting

16:38

around on a motorcycle, with

16:41

Nupsha publishing dozens of articles and

16:43

books and really pioneering, and here

16:45

I really mean the colonial implications

16:47

of the word pioneering, the field

16:49

of quote, unquote, Albanian studies. Gerrit

16:53

Roble, quoted by Robert Elsie, has this to

16:55

say about Nupsha and his Albanian fetish, quote,

16:58

if we look back upon Nupsha's life,

17:00

we can observe the many and extremely

17:03

diverse aspects in his being, including many

17:05

of interdiction. His ingenious intuition was in

17:07

stark contrast to his inability to understand

17:09

and appreciate the motives of others. His

17:12

insensitivity and egoism were in contrast

17:14

to his devotion to the Albanians,

17:16

his critical intelligence to his emotional

17:19

bias, end quote. And

17:21

fetish really was the word here. Nupsha's

17:24

journals are full of breathless evocations

17:26

of Albanians and their honor culture.

17:29

Here's a story quote. This

17:32

is from Nupsha's journals. I

17:34

was deeply impressed by an episode which occurred

17:36

in the Cheme Valley near the Tamara bridge

17:38

in Calmenti country. I had

17:40

asked for a glass of water at a house, but

17:42

instead of water, the head of the household whom I did

17:45

not know at all gave me a bowl of buttermilk,

17:47

which I drank to the very last drop. I

17:49

had just finished drinking when the brother of the

17:51

homeowner, also unknown to me, happened to come home.

17:54

As it was evening by this time and he was

17:56

tired from his long journey, he asked to have some

17:58

buttermilk. All that he round, of course, was

18:00

an empty bowl. When the owner

18:02

of the house told him who had drunk

18:04

all the buttermilk, he was not upset as

18:06

one might have expected, but rather happy and

18:08

relieved that I had reached the house before

18:10

he had, because his family had thus been

18:12

spared the shame of letting guests depart without

18:15

having offered them something to eat." Napsha

18:20

also describes with great admiration witnessing a man

18:22

take tea with the murderer of his son

18:24

and saying nothing because they were both guests

18:26

in a third party's house. A

18:29

psyche, yeah. I

18:31

guess there's kind of hints there of this idea

18:33

of the quote unquote noble savage. Oh,

18:36

sort of this like highly dignified

18:38

sort of culture that comes in

18:40

more simple cultures. Absolutely.

18:42

That's where it comes from. And

18:44

this interest was able to coincide, as it

18:47

did with so many of our colonialist bad

18:49

gays, with a rather cold-hearted promotion

18:51

of the material interests of his

18:53

home country. So Gesem

18:56

Alpian offers the following assessment. Quote, Nopsha

18:58

is a typical example of the early

19:00

20th century Western scholar whose interest in

19:03

Albania was ignited not simply out of

19:05

curiosity for this exotic spot that was

19:07

gradually emerging from the five-century-long Turkish

19:09

eclipse, but primarily by the interests of

19:12

his own country. Nopsha was not an

19:14

independent tourist traveler, nor was he a

19:16

byronic hero who sided with the Albanians

19:19

because he wanted to help them to win

19:21

their independence and establish an Albanian state. Nopsha

19:24

was throughout his involvement in Albania more

19:26

of a volunteer on behalf of Austria-Hungary

19:28

than of the Albanians, end quote. And

19:32

he points out, Albian does, that at

19:34

one point Nopsha dismisses Ismail Kamali, who

19:36

is an Albanian independence leader, as

19:39

a traitor to the cause and as

19:41

a fraud based on essentially unsubstantiated gossip.

19:45

So Nopsha at this time ends up beginning

19:48

to do what I can only describe

19:50

as Albanian cosplay. Okay.

19:52

So he starts dressing up like

19:55

an Albanian and traveling to regions

19:57

of the country that very few outsiders had ever been

19:59

to. into, but he's dressing like an

20:01

Albanian most of the time. In

20:05

1907, he and Doda

20:07

were actually kidnapped by the bandit Mustafa

20:09

Lita, and here's a quote from his

20:12

memoirs of being kidnapped. Quote,

20:15

we slept well in Ujmisht. The houses are of

20:17

the Kula type, all at some distance from one

20:19

another. In Villa we found Kulas that

20:21

were built closer together, and in houses

20:23

made of rubble with no whitewashing. In

20:26

Ujmisht, I learned something of their habit of going abroad

20:28

for work. On the way to Villa we

20:30

met some men who were on their way to pick up a bride. They

20:34

recognized me as a foreigner, but Mahmoud stated

20:36

that I was his mik guest, and that quelled

20:38

suspicions. The wedding procession soon went its

20:40

own way, and we observed it from the distance it

20:42

had stopped in front of the home of the bride.

20:45

After numerous volleys of gunfire, the men of the

20:47

processions entered the house, had something to eat, and

20:49

took the bride with them. This is different from

20:52

the custom and wretch where no one enters the

20:54

bride's home. Mahmoud accompanied

20:56

us to Villa. Traveling in

20:58

Albanian costume is much better than a European dress.

21:01

First the people don't stare so much, and secondly

21:03

it's much easier to make contact with the locals.

21:06

Mahmoud turned back just before we reached Villa because

21:09

he was party to a blood feud there.

21:11

There was a beautiful mosque in Villa, and yet all

21:14

of the inhabitants were robbers. However, they did not rob

21:16

in their own village. Order must

21:18

reign at home. Mark was

21:20

sent in advance from Villa to Kallis to inform

21:22

Mustafa Lita that we were on our way and

21:24

returned from Kallis that evening. When we

21:26

got to Kallis I was drenched because of the pouring rain

21:28

as I had been the previous day. My

21:30

clothes soon dried beside the open fire. Mustafa

21:34

Lita was a portly fellow, but agile and quick

21:36

in his movements. He seemed quite muscular.

21:39

He had a large gray mustache, always entered

21:41

the room with large forceful strides, and hastened

21:43

to take his seat, during which time all

21:45

of the rest of his men rose to

21:47

their feet. He was promptly served

21:49

by his men. One of them took

21:51

his socks off, and another brought water for him to wash

21:53

his feet. Another man handed

21:55

him his meter-long pipe and cigarettes, and someone

21:58

else gave him a light. Mustafa

22:00

Lita was taciturn and looked quite confident

22:02

without having to say anything. He

22:04

had large, steel-colored eyes that revealed little

22:07

of his thoughts. The

22:09

only indication of what he might have been thinking

22:11

came from his intonation and gestures. He

22:13

was not a calm person, but was

22:15

not overly agitated, simply decisive. There

22:19

was something rather peremptory in his conversation. The

22:22

reason I am endeavoring to describe Mustafa Lita

22:24

in such detail is that he was one

22:26

of the most dastardly robbers of Dibra in

22:28

all of Turkey at the time. He

22:30

reminded me of descriptions I had read of Ali

22:33

Pasha Tepelena, the ruler of Jainina. I

22:35

told Mustafa Lita that I had come to help

22:37

him fulfill a wish of his, without referring precisely

22:39

to what I meant. Mustafa

22:41

Lita then revealed that he had asked the

22:43

abbot to get him the position of a

22:46

Bimbash leak, army major, but that Hussein Hilmi

22:48

Pasha, the Inspector General of Macedonia,

22:50

had presented it. We

22:52

then conversed of matters of little importance. Even

22:55

thereafter, we washed our hands for dinner and a table

22:57

was brought in for the food. Mustafa

22:59

Lita sat down at the table alone and broke

23:01

the bread distributing the pieces. Everyone

23:04

else in the room waited at his place for Mustafa Lita

23:06

to call them to the table. Mustafa Lita

23:08

ate quickly and the evening was well spent."

23:10

I think we really get

23:12

a sense there of his attitude while

23:14

traveling, his eye, and the way

23:17

that he's sort of thinking about and perceiving

23:19

the Albanian people that he's with. Mustafa

23:22

Lita ended up deciding he was a

23:25

spy, probably correctly, and taking him to

23:27

the town of Prizren, where

23:29

he then had to be rescued by

23:31

Doda's father. So his boyfriend's dad showed

23:33

up with ten armed men and got

23:35

him out of it. Now

23:39

in 1912 to

23:41

13, in the First Balkan War, Albania

23:44

wins independence and there's a meeting in

23:46

Trieste called the Albanian Congress of Trieste.

23:49

This is sponsored by Austrian

23:51

authorities to discuss a provisional

23:53

government and to

23:55

decide who should occupy the throne

23:57

of an independent Albania. Now

24:01

the idea is that a

24:03

central European noble family is going

24:05

to provide a king to be

24:07

a constitutional monarch. And

24:10

the idea here is that we're prying territory

24:12

off of the decaying Ottomans instead of adding

24:14

it to Europe. And it's

24:16

being sponsored by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, so the idea

24:19

of independence is complicated. Yes. That

24:21

being said, there's a lot of independence leaders

24:23

who are participating there. Independence

24:26

leaders strategically allied themselves with Austria-Hungary at

24:28

this time, at least some of

24:30

them, just as a way of getting out of

24:32

the Ottomans. A guarantor of freedom. Well, a guarantor

24:34

of something. Now Nupsa

24:36

has an idea about who should

24:39

be king and wait until you

24:41

hear it. Quote,

24:44

at this moment, this is again from his diaries,

24:47

sort of memoirs, quote, at

24:50

this moment I resolved to take a step which

24:52

could easily have made me a laughingstock and put

24:54

all of my activities on behalf of Albania in

24:56

a bad light. Could have, right? Nonetheless,

24:59

I decided to go through with it. I

25:01

informed Excellency Conrad verbally that I would

25:03

be willing to join the list of

25:06

candidates for the throne if

25:08

the foreign ministry would support me and

25:10

told him that to have myself

25:12

proclaimed king of Albania, wait

25:14

for it, I would simply need

25:17

the one-time payment of a large sum

25:19

of money in order to buy the

25:21

support of these so-called Albanian patriots. Wow.

25:25

Wow. Once

25:27

a reigning European monarch, I would have

25:29

no difficulty coming up with the further

25:32

funds needed by marrying a wealthy American

25:34

heiress aspiring to royalty, a step which

25:37

under the other circumstances I would have been loathed to

25:39

take. I

25:43

was sure of the support of the inhabitants of

25:45

the northern part of the country in view of

25:47

the stance I had, end quote. Like

25:50

what an asshole. So the plan is that the

25:52

Albanians, he loves them and they're great and they

25:54

have this amazing culture but they're also stupid and

25:56

corrupt and all they really care about is money.

25:59

So he'll buy our off their loyalty, be loyal

26:01

to the Austrians, and then he'll pay

26:03

the Austrian money back and pay for the

26:05

governing of the country by marrying a rich

26:08

American lady who just wants to be queen of

26:10

Albania, and then I guess

26:13

keep living with his long

26:15

time private secretary on the

26:17

side. Well,

26:20

you know, it's a career. Unfortunately,

26:23

Doda would not be able to bear him

26:25

heirs, but maybe some kind

26:27

of a range of drive. I don't

26:29

know. Now, this,

26:31

you'll be shocked to hear, doesn't work out.

26:34

So he continues in the diary, quote,

26:37

my candidacy may have been ridiculed in

26:39

competent circles. Be

26:43

that as it may, I grew disgusted

26:45

a few weeks later when withdrew from

26:47

all further activities concerning Albania. Some

26:50

of those in the know said that I only

26:52

did so because my high-falutin plans had not come

26:54

about. I, for my part,

26:56

gave as my reason for withdrawing my

26:58

candidacy that the Albania created by the

27:00

conference of London was a stillbirth. I

27:03

did not even attempt to contradict the

27:06

slanderous allegations, which my opponents reveled in,

27:09

because I knew that events to come would prove to be

27:11

my best defense. The collapse of

27:13

the Albanian state in 1914 showed I

27:15

was right to get off the sinking ship in time in 1913.

27:19

He didn't want to get off the sinking ship in 1913. He

27:22

wanted to become the king. My only quote-unquote

27:24

mistake was to have recognized what was to

27:26

come long before my opponents did. And

27:32

he wrote a letter at this point saying, my

27:35

Albania is dead. What a

27:37

prick. So during

27:39

the First World War, he ends up

27:41

falling much deeper into spying. He

27:44

went undercover in his native Transylvania as

27:46

a shepherd. But

27:48

in 1919, the Hungarian

27:50

Soviet Republic declared its independence from the

27:53

Austrian throne in the aftermath of the

27:55

last First World War. 130

28:00

day long Soviet state. It was quickly

28:03

abolished and became the liberal Hungarian Republic.

28:05

But remember, this is two years after

28:07

the Bolshevik Revolution, right? The path of

28:09

Germany is still somewhat unclear. It

28:12

is a bad time and place to be an aristocrat

28:14

with ties to the old regime. And

28:17

Noppce was stuck in

28:19

the Hungarian Socialist Republic with Doda,

28:22

and he needed to get out. So he

28:24

hijacked a plane and flew it to Vienna.

28:27

And this is the first recorded

28:29

airplane hijacking in history. The

28:33

loss continued as the aftermath of the First

28:35

World War played out. Transylvania

28:37

was ceded from Austria

28:40

to Romania after the Treaty of Versailles.

28:43

And with it went his estates and his

28:45

possessions. And so suddenly, for the very first

28:47

time in his life, Noppce had to actually

28:49

earn a living. But lucky

28:51

for him, he had a qualification as a

28:53

geologist. And so the kinds

28:56

of people who can always find work. So he became

28:58

president of the Hungarian Geological

29:01

Institute. And you'll never guess

29:03

who was employed there as a secretary. But

29:08

like so many aristocrats forced to work,

29:10

he quickly became born. So

29:12

he quit his job out of boredom. He

29:14

took a motorcycle trip around Europe. He

29:17

returned to Vienna deeply in debt. He

29:19

then sold his fossil collections to the Natural

29:21

History Museum in London, where they're still on

29:23

display. He did that to pay his debts.

29:26

And at this time, his health and

29:29

his mental state became increasingly fragile. He

29:31

did manage to complete the memoirs that we've

29:34

been quoting from here, but they remained unpublished

29:36

until 2001 in German, which he wrote

29:38

them in. And then they've been translated much more recently. Many

29:42

of his ideas about dinosaur evolution, writes

29:45

the paleontologist Gareth Dyke in Scientific American

29:48

have turned out to be true. Quote,

29:51

the dinosaurs of Transylvania will most

29:53

likely prove critical to understanding the

29:55

global distribution of dinosaurs just before

29:57

the zenith of their diversity. 65

30:00

million years ago, a heyday cut

30:02

short by a cataclysmic asteroid impact

30:05

that extinguished their kind." Like

30:09

the dinosaurs, the eccentric aristocrats of

30:11

Europe were extinguished in the 20th

30:13

century. By 1928, Mapcha was frail. By

30:18

1933, he needed to deliver his lectures in wheelchairs.

30:21

He delivered his final lecture in spring of

30:23

that year to the Geological Society in Antwerp,

30:26

and even with a high fever and lecturing

30:28

from a wheelchair, he was still speaking extemporaneously

30:31

and captivating a packed hall.

30:35

But he was increasingly poor and depressed, and

30:37

so that April, he drugged the love of

30:39

his life, shot him, and then shot himself.

30:42

Quoting from his suicide note, quote, "'The

30:45

reason for my suicide is my nervous system, which

30:47

is at its end. The fact

30:49

that I killed my long-term friend and secretary,

30:51

Mr. Bayadid El-Mazdodah, in his sleep, without him

30:54

having an inkling as to what was going

30:56

on, was because I did not want

30:58

to leave him behind sick, in misery and in poverty,

31:00

because he could have suffered too much. He

31:03

was cremated in Vienna, and his ashes were buried

31:05

there in Zimmering.'" You're

31:08

listening to Bad Gays, a podcast all about evil

31:10

and complicated queer people in history. We'd

31:12

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31:32

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31:35

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31:37

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31:41

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31:50

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31:55

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32:11

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click subscribe in Apple Podcasts.

32:26

Back to the show. Thanks

32:30

Ben. What a fascinating, weird, diverse,

32:32

sort of like almost cartoonish sort

32:34

of life. Yeah I

32:36

really want a TV series about

32:38

this. I think it would be a really fun period

32:40

piece. Yeah. In terms of... And anyone who

32:42

wants me to write it can feel free to get in touch. Ben

32:45

writes things.com. In

32:47

terms of his relationship,

32:51

what would he sort of providing attitudes around

32:54

homosexuality in Albania

32:56

if it was this sort of border state between

32:58

these two cultures who

33:00

I guess quite different in some ways,

33:02

sex gender systems. So that's an

33:04

interesting question. There's

33:07

an article by Stephen Omari in

33:09

the edited volume Islamic Homosexualities called

33:12

Male Homosexuality in Ottoman Albania that

33:14

kind of gets into social attitude.

33:16

So the Ottoman Empire had abolished

33:19

its sodomy laws in 1858. There was a

33:21

fair amount

33:25

of writing in

33:28

anthropological and ethnographic sources at

33:30

the time about various kinds

33:34

of pederastic traditions in Albania. The

33:38

German scientists writing in the mid-19th century

33:40

about young men between 16 and 24 loving boys from 12 to

33:43

17 and then getting married

33:46

and kind of giving it up. So

33:49

it kind of fits into certain

33:51

kinds of Islamic traditions

33:53

that we've talked about. But

33:56

again, it seems to be much more... What was going

33:58

on there seems to be much more... more in the

34:00

kind of like,

34:03

peterastic and age-differentiated tradition

34:06

than in a kind of equal tradition.

34:11

Yeah, like men of the same state and

34:13

social status. Yeah, there was one

34:16

person that Mari quotes talks about, quote,

34:18

a permissive attitude to male homosexuality, particularly

34:21

when shepherds were away from feminine company

34:23

in the hills, end quote. The

34:25

Brokeback Mountains theory of sexuality.

34:28

Exactly. And

34:31

bottoming after eating a can of beans, braver

34:33

than the troops. But

34:37

back to the subject at hand. Yeah,

34:40

but like situational homosexuality, peterastic

34:42

traditions, kind of all

34:45

understood by European observers as part of

34:47

this kind of like

34:49

primitive or barbaric. Monticek

34:52

East. Despotic East. Not

34:55

really despotic in the kind of Orientalist sense. I

34:57

think it's what's going on here as much more

34:59

primitivist actually. In terms of like...

35:01

Mountain people. ...mountain people and,

35:03

you know, rough border region

35:05

bandits, etc. Yeah. And

35:08

Albanians, those are traditions of depicting Albanians and

35:10

European culture as kind of sensual,

35:14

erotic, but

35:17

also very foreign, alluring,

35:19

but somewhat barbaric. Yeah,

35:21

this concept of balkanization, different form, not

35:23

balkanization as we understand it, that the

35:26

Europe ends, sort of the Balkans begin

35:29

when the next country across. Yeah.

35:33

And regarding this being the first

35:35

plane hijacker, he stole the plane.

35:37

He stole the plane. What were

35:40

the consequences of stealing a plane

35:42

back then? Well, because he stole

35:44

the plane from the hated Hungarian

35:46

Socialist Republic. Okay. Like,

35:50

it was kind of... I mean, it's a 133-day

35:52

Bolshevik Republic, right? So there's kind of a lot

35:54

of chaos in those 133 days in Hungary in

35:57

1919. And

36:00

yeah, I mean he just sort of stole it to get

36:02

out and landed it in Vienna and never returned. I

36:05

mean he returned to Hungary when he was

36:07

president of the Hungarian Geological Society but this

36:09

was after that regime had collapsed. And

36:13

so you're talking about, you know, liberal

36:16

countries are not particularly interested in

36:19

prosecuting property rights claims against

36:21

elites who stole things

36:23

in order to escape from brief communist...

36:25

Yeah, right. Especially that time. ...situations, especially

36:28

at that time, yeah. And

36:31

in terms, like you've mentioned throughout this

36:33

idea of, you know, like of course

36:35

the lifelong, the sort of long-term personal

36:37

private sex entry, do we have any

36:39

evidence about

36:41

the nature of their relationship? We

36:43

do. What's interesting is that on

36:46

the one hand you have someone who's really... I

36:48

mean one of the reasons why he's interested in

36:50

Albania is probably this kind of reputation for primitive,

36:55

quote-unquote primitive tolerance of male

36:58

male sex, either situational or

37:00

pedorastic. But it seems like

37:02

his relationship with Dota was neither situational nor

37:04

pedorastic. Dota was slightly younger but they were

37:07

both very much consenting adults. He

37:09

didn't buy him. The two

37:11

sort of stuck together, right, even when Nopsja

37:14

like lost his money. Like it's not like Dota was just

37:16

sort of sticking around because he was being paid and then

37:18

left as soon as there wasn't any. He

37:21

seems to have been sort of genuinely devoted

37:23

to one another. But when you...

37:26

When he refers to him as the only person who ever

37:28

really loved me, is that... Do

37:31

you think that's in a sort of similar

37:33

way that you would like the gay men

37:36

mate to say that today about their partners?

37:38

Or is that sort of almost like this

37:40

like Lawrence Farabia thing with his boy of

37:42

the sons? No, no, no, they were boyfriends.

37:45

They were very much boyfriends and it seems to have very much

37:47

been a mutual relationship from what I can tell. Which

37:50

is not to say that, you know, I mean he

37:52

murdered him in the end, right? So I'm not saying

37:54

that this is a great relationship where everyone treated each

37:57

other well, but you know, it

37:59

was a real... relationship at least at some point.

38:03

And in the field of paleontology,

38:05

it was interesting he switched almost

38:07

from paleontology to geology as he

38:09

grows older. You

38:12

mentioned that some of his opinions were unorthodox at

38:14

the time and only in the late 20th century

38:16

became adopted. Was he forced out

38:19

of the world of paleontology for his beliefs or

38:21

he just changed his? No, no,

38:23

he just got really interested in Albania, although he

38:25

never really changed

38:28

completely. So, he

38:31

actually continued lecturing

38:33

on paleontology throughout his life,

38:36

like his last lectures were

38:38

on paleontology. That was what he was

38:40

best known for. Geology

38:42

was another thing that he worked in, like that's

38:44

where he found the job because geology is obviously

38:46

an extremely important science

38:48

for economics and for production

38:51

and mining and all sorts of things. So, that's why

38:53

that was the job he was able to get. But

38:57

he was absolutely still interested

38:59

in paleontology and active in

39:01

paleontology and lecturing

39:03

on until the end of his life. Wow, what

39:05

a fascinating man. Yeah. So,

39:10

on that note, yeah, what do you think of

39:12

him in terms of the classic judgement we make

39:15

at the end of the podcast? Good gay, bad

39:17

gay, not good gay, not bad, bad not gay?

39:21

Really gay, long

39:23

time private secretary. And

39:25

I think anyone who

39:28

murders suicide their boyfriend is pretty definitionally

39:30

a bad guy. And in

39:32

a very classic kind of patriarch murder

39:34

suicide way, right? Like this is exactly

39:36

the way that patriarchs

39:39

act when their authority is

39:41

challenged, right? And when they feel like

39:43

they can't provide. It's

39:46

an extremely like classic, I mean not

39:48

to say, not

39:52

to almost minimize the behavior by using

39:54

an overused phrase, but like a very

39:56

sort of toxic masculine behavior. Yeah. Obviously

40:00

someone with an extremely

40:04

interesting life

40:06

story and someone who

40:08

is extremely like

40:11

dashing and compelling and

40:14

in a kind of be gay do crimes way

40:16

kind of fun to think about. Yeah, I agree

40:18

on that. So if

40:20

people want to learn more about him, what sort

40:23

of source he used for the episode? Well,

40:25

there's a couple academic articles. There's

40:27

his diaries which have been published or

40:29

available on JSTOR. There's another

40:31

article by Robert Elsie about Napscia.

40:33

Elsie also translated the diaries and

40:35

then there's that article by Ghezim

40:38

Alpion. Then there's

40:40

some stuff about his paleontology in Smithsonian

40:42

Magazine and on the website of the

40:44

Natural History Museum in the UK. And

40:48

then an article on crime reads

40:50

about skyjackings and then some

40:52

other Albanian history sources. They're all cited in

40:55

the show notes. That's

40:57

great. Thanks very much. Well,

40:59

that's the end of our episode. You'll be

41:01

listening to Bad Gays. My name is Hugh

41:03

Lamy. You can find me online at hugh.substack.com.

41:05

And you can find me on the internet

41:08

at benwrightsthings.com and at benwrightsthings everywhere. So

41:10

next week. Bye. Bye.

41:13

Bye. Bye. Bye.

41:16

Bye. Bye. Bye.