Gabriel Strobl

Who was Gabriel Strobl?

Gabriel Strobl was an Austrian Roman Catholic priest and entomologist who specialised in Diptera.

In 1866 the then 20-year-old Gabriel Strobl became a Roman Catholic priest monk at the Benedictine monastery Admont Abbey. A devastating Monastery fire in 1865 had destroyed the Natural History Cabinet and its contents which had included Joseph Stammel’s Universe. He was entrusted by Abbot Karlmann Hieber with rebuilding the Natural History Museum. In 44 years of work - until his stroke in 1910 - Gabriel Strobl built up the Museum anew. In his first 12 years of work, he devoted himself principally to botany, before dedicating himself completely to entomology for the following 32 years. Although his published work is mainly on Diptera he also worked on Hymenoptera and Coleoptera of the Balkan peninsula which was partially ruled by Austria-Hungary until 1918.