Krieger, Johann Nepomuk

Born Unterwiesenbach, (Bavaria, Germany), 1865

Johann Krieger completed less than one‐third of a planned lunar atlas that showed great promise before he died, his health ruined by his obsessive commitment to the mapping project. The son of a brewer, Krieger was little more than a boy when he started to observe the Moon with a small refractor from the sleepy mountain hamlet of Unterwiesenbach, where his scanty education ended at the age of 15. Six years later he traveled to Cologne to visit Hermann Klein , the foremost German selenographer and popularizer of astronomy of the era. Klein not only warmly encouraged Krieger to make selenography his life's work, but assumed the role of his mentor, directing the young man to study mathematics, physics, photography, and the graphic arts.

Krieger's ensuing academic career faltered because he lacked the mathematical