User:CampWood/Georg Matthäus Vischer

Georg Matthäus Vischer was an Austrian topographer, copper engraver, and clergyman.

Despite his spiritual profession, geography and surveying were his real vocations. Vischer created maps and drew cities, castles, and monasteries of Lower Austria, Upper Austria, Styria, Moravia, and Hungary. Many of his prints are the oldest surviving illustrations. He is among the most prominent cartographers and topographers of Austria.

Life
Vischer, who was of peasant descent, attended a monastic school in Stams for several years; however, he left due to his family's financial difficulties. At age 15, he saw the end of the Thirty Years' War, in which he served in Schwaben under General Johann Graf von Sporck.

In 1648, he was back in Stamms, and after a cancelled Novitiate, he began an unsteady life. In any case, he worked for several years as a pastor, but mostly as a "free" cartographer.