Located in the city’s history museum, this looked like a nineteenth century painting of a child of wealthy parents. However, the information board notes that this is Peter Kozler (1824-1879) in an artwork painted in around 1840. It is indeed the case that he had wealthy parents, which is why there’s a painting of him in existence, but he is what could be called a high achiever in life of his own accord.
I’m quite engaged with knowing that Kozler founded a brewery, indeed Union Brewery which is still going, but he also became the national cartographer. In many ways, the backdrop of the painting with the rolling hills is perhaps a pre-cursor to his future career.
The particular work that he perhaps became best known for, and his own Wikipedia page for, is what is known as Kosler’s Map, created between 1848 and 1852. This was the first map of the Slovene lands and this annoyed the Austrian authorities who seized a lot of his work and put him in prison.
He also looks like quite a focused little boy and he must have been quite determined to end up redesigning the borders of Slovenia and starting a brewery. So, here’s a national icon during the years of youth, before he started to try and map a way of having a coexistence of German and Slovenian culture in what would become a united Slovenia.