Karl Theodor Kunz
Karl Theodor Kunz (born July 27, 1791 in Dresden , † December 29, 1863 in Dresden) was a German engineer who worked mainly in the railway industry.
Live and act
The engineer, major a. D., hydraulic engineering director , secret building officer in the royal Saxon Ministry of Finance , studied railways in England in 1833 and 1834 , planned the Leipzig-Dresden railway and took over as chief engineer on November 1, 1835, the construction of the first German long-distance railway line the first larger railway tunnel ( Oberauer Tunnel , length 513 m), which was removed in the 1930s, and the first German railway bridges , e.g. B. the Marienbrücke in Dresden. As part of the construction of the railway line from Leipzig to Dresden, he first used the broad-base rail developed by the American Robert Livingston Stevens in Germany , but - unlike Stevens' intended - stored it directly on the cross sleepers .
Friedrich List , who became the protagonist of a cross-border German railway system as early as 1833, bitterly criticized the poor financial planning of the project in his opinion and the route chosen by Kunz, which, however, after costly examination by English specialists, had proven to be completely correct.
After the completion of the Leipzig-Dresden Railway in 1839, Kunz took over the construction management of the Saxon-Bavarian Railway ( railway line Leipzig – Hof ) until 1843 and in 1844 he was appointed to the Saxon Ministry of Finance as the highest director of the Saxon railway system.
For the railway pioneer Max Maria von Weber he was a fatherly friend. As early as 1846 (i.e. ten years before the Association of German Engineers was founded) he founded the Saxon Engineering Association with Johann Andreas Schubert (1808–1870) . Kunz died in Dresden in 1863 and was buried in the inner Neustädter Friedhof there; the grave has not been preserved.
Commemoration
At the Dresden-Neustadt train station ( Hansastraße ) there is a bronze relief with the portrait of Karl Theodor Kunz and the inscription: “THE MEMORY to THEODOR KUNZ, BUILDER of the LEIPZIG-DRESDEN railroad, the SAECHS. ENGINEERING ASSOCIATION. 1869. "
literature
- A German technician's apprenticeship and master craftsman years . In: The Gazebo . Issue 33–34, 1864, pp. 519-522; 536-539 ( full text [ Wikisource ] obituary).
Web links
- Karl Theodor Kunz in the Stadtwiki Dresden
Individual evidence
- ^ Gertraude Stahl-Heimann: Dresden cemeteries and their special features. Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung, Heidelberg 1996, p. 28.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Kunz, Karl Theodor |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German engineer who worked mainly in the railway industry |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 27, 1791 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Dresden |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 29, 1863 |
| Place of death | Dresden |