Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 31.djvu/350

 and arranged the recently acquired collection of Mr. Greville. At the time of his sudden death, 6 Sept. 1851, in London, he had charge of the mineralogical department of the British Museum.

Besides various papers in journals, he was associated with Dr. Sims in the issue of ‘Annals of Botany,’ 1805-7.

[Athenæum, 1851, p. 954.]  KOTZWARA or KOCSWARA, FRANZ (1750?–1793), musician, of Bohemian origin, was born in Prague about 1750. He seems to have led a vagabond life in Germany and Holland previous to 1784, when he was attracted to England by the Handel commemoration in Westminster Abbey, in which he took part as a member of the band. He was subsequently in Ireland, but returned to London in 1791, when he was engaged by Giovanni Gallini [q. v.] as a double-bass player at the new Italian opera-house. He was about the same time engaged by various music-sellers to compose trios and quartets. His sonata, the ‘Battle of Prague,’ for pianoforte, violin, and violoncello (which is still performed), at once achieved popularity and success. He wrote also three sonatas for piano and violin, three for the piano alone, besides some serenades, and three solos for the viola. In the spring of 1792 he was travelling on the continent, and François Joseph Fétis, then a boy of eight years old, describes a visit which Kotzwara paid to his father at Mons. After Kotzwara had heard Fétis play a sonata of Mozart, he invited him to play at sight on the harpsichord his ‘Battle of Prague.’ Fétis's father accompanied him on the violin, and Kotzwara himself on the 'cello.

Kotzwara was very versatile, and played a great number of instruments with fluency if not distinction. He was, however, as dissipated as he was clever, and on 2 Feb. 1793 he was discovered hanging in a house of ill-fame in Vine Street, Covent Garden. He had been making experiments in hanging in the company of some half-drunken women, and his death was the result of an accident; the parties implicated were arrested, but were ultimately acquitted. 

KRABTREE. [See .]

KRATZER, NICHOLAS (1487–1550?), mathematician, was born at Munich, Bavaria, in 1487, and studied in the universities of Cologne and Wittemberg, graduating B.A. at the latter place. Coming to England he made the acquaintance of Richard Foxe, bishop of Winchester, who on 4 July 1517 appointed him to a fellowship in his newly founded college of Corpus Christi, Oxford, and on 20 Feb. 1522–3 he was incorporated B.A. He proceeded M.A. 18 March, when he was described in the ‘University Register’ as ‘notissimus & probatissimus et in mathematicis et in philosophicis.’ Kratzer lectured on astronomy in Oxford, and soon afterwards was appointed mathematical reader there by Cardinal Wolsey. He was skilled in the construction of sun-dials, and erected two in Oxford, one in the garden of Corpus Christi, reproduced in Fowler's ‘History of Corpus Christi College,’ p. 84, and another in the south churchyard of St. Mary's Church (removed in 1744). After the assembly of bishops and divines which met at Wolsey's house in 1521 had condemned Luther's doctrines, ‘a testimony was sent to Oxford, and fastned on the Dial in St. Marys churchyard by Nich. Kratzer, the maker and contriver thereof.’ Leland refers to this dial in his ‘De Encomiis.’

In 1520 Kratzer was at Antwerp on a visit to Erasmus, where he met Albert Dürer, then on his famous journey to the Netherlands. On 12 Oct. 1520 Tunstal wrote to Henry VIII saying that he had met Kratzer at Antwerp, ‘an Almayn deviser of the King's Horologes,’ and he asked that he should be allowed to remain until the pending election of the emperor was over. ‘Being,’ Tunstal added, ‘born in High Almayn, and having acquaintance of many of the Princes, he might be able to find out the mind of the Electors touching the affairs of the Empire’ (Letters and Papers Henry VIII, i. 1018). In the same year among Henry's payments appears the quarterly salary of 100s. to ‘Nicholas Craser an Estronomyer’ (ib. p. 408). Dürer drew Kratzer's portrait, but it is not known to be extant. On 24 Oct. 1524 Kratzer wrote to Dürer from London a letter asking him to draw him a model of an instrument for measuring distances, which is in the collection of Herr Lempertz at Cologne; the reply from Dürer to Kratzer is in the Guildhall Library in London. When Hans Holbein [q. v.] came to London, Kratzer was one of his earliest friends. Holbein painted a magnificent portrait of Kratzer at a table on which are many mathematical instruments; this picture is now at the Louvre, and was painted in 1528, when Kratzer was forty-one years of age. A good copy was lent by Viscount Galway to the Tudor Exhibition, 1890 (No. 129). In 1529 Kratzer was sent with Hugh Bozvell and Hans Bour to search the king's woods and