A crude, incomplete fluorite crystal in light greenish and pink colors from Achsel Alp, an alpine locality in Hollersbach Valley, Hohe Tauern, Austria.

German Mine Director (Bergdirektor) Karl Tausch was born in 1893 and grew up in the town of Marburg-an-der-Dräu (Maribor) in Yugoslavia. He began collecting fine mineral specimens in his youth. Around 1910 a professor at the Marburg Middle School, Dr. Leo Walter, further stimulated Tausch's interest in mineralogy and mineral collecting. Karl Tausch earned a degree in mining engineering (Dipl. Ing.), from the Montanist University in Leoben, and worked first in a coal mine in Grünbach in Lower Austria.
After World War II ended and more orebodies were discovered at Hüttenberg, Tausch brought in two other mineralogists, Professor E. Clar and Dr. Heinz Meixner, who became his mentor in mineralogy and collecting. Together they established a research center for the Austrian-Alpine coal and iron industry. Tausch was also a co-founder and director of the Mineralogy Group of the Scientific Society of Carinthia. He made numerous collecting trips throughout Carinthia and Steiermark, and also to Italy, Sardinia, Germany and Switzerland, and developed trading contacts in Norway, Spain, the U.S, Switzerland, Germany and Italy. He also acquired many specimens from mineral dealer Anton Berger in Mödling, Germany, including fine examples from the collections of Hans Karabacek, Adolf Lechner, Saxlehner, Seeland, Pohl, Himmelbauer and many others. Following Tausch's death in the 1970s, Christian Weise purchased his 7,000-specimen mineral collection from his widow and resold all but about ten of the best specimens through his dealership in Munich, Kristalldruse.