Heinrich Johann Frauberger

Heinrich Frauberger put together more than 200 pieces of Cypriot gold jewellery for the museum he directed in Düsseldorf³. Born at Oberndorf an der Melk in 1845, he trained at the Vienna Museum for Art and Industry, worked on the Vienna world fair of 1873 and was curator at the Gewerbe-Museum in Brünn. In 1882 he founded and directed the Düsseldorf Central-Gewerbe-Verein; its museum opened in 1883⁴.

In 1890 he travelled to the Orient as a collector for the museum⁴. Matthias Matthias Recke states that the Cypriot gold came through the mediation of Max Ohnefalsch-Richter, though the catalogue entry in the same study says only that it came "wohl über Ohnefalsch-Richter", probably through him¹. In the appendix he wrote for Ohnefalsch-Richter's Kypros, the Bible and Homer (1893) he gave his own account. Gold finds, he wrote, pass through the collections of well-to-do bankers, officials and wine merchants, and from these sources he had himself put together, on his travels through Cyprus, more than 200 pieces for the Düsseldorf museum, of which twenty characteristic examples were published³. Ohnefalsch-Richter thanked the Central-Gewerbeverein and "Herr Director Frauberger" for photographs of the gold made free of charge, and for the description printed in the appendix².

A burglary in 1916 took most of the set. The museum, now Museum Kunstpalast, holds 22 pieces and unpublished photographs of the whole group¹. Frauberger later became better known for his work on Jewish art history. He died at Hinterstein im Allgäu on 15 July 1920⁴.