Alois Negrelli from Moldelbe

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Alois Negrelli, lithograph by August Prinzhofer , 1845
Gschwendtobel Bridge in Lingenau , built in 1830
The Münsterbrücke in Zurich, built 1836–1838
Kornhaus near Bellevueplatz, built 1838–1839, later converted into a concert hall, demolished in 1896
Negrelliho viaduct - Negrelli Bridge in Prague

Alois Negrelli (also: Louis Negrelli), since 1850 knight Negrelli of Moldelbe (* 23 January 1799 as Luigi Negrelli in Markt Primör ( it.Fiera di Primiero ), near Trient , Tyrol , Austrian Empire ; † October 1, 1858 in Vienna ) was an Austrian transport engineer. Negrelli built roads , bridges and railway lines as well as a few churches in Austria , Italy and Switzerland ; in Switzerland he was the project manager for the first Swiss railway, the Spanish-Brötli-Bahn from Zurich to Baden in Aargau .

Life

Negrelli grew up as the seventh of ten children of an Italian-speaking father and a German-speaking mother in the Dolomite village of Fiera di Primiero (German Primör ). The father had to spend five years in prison because of his involvement in the Landsturm against Napoleon and lost his fortune. His sister, Giuseppina Negrelli , was also a fighter in the Tyrolean struggle for freedom . However, with an Austrian scholarship, the son was able to attend school in Feltre and the universities in Padua and Innsbruck .

Negrelli's professional activity took him from Innsbruck via Bregenz , St. Gallen and Zurich to Vienna, where he was responsible for numerous railway projects in Bohemia , Moravia , Galicia and Bucovina . After the revolutions of 1848/49 he was sent to Verona in the Kingdom of Lombardy-Veneto . In 1855 he returned to Vienna.

Since 1828 Negrelli was married to Amalie von Pirkenau, who died unexpectedly in 1840, and in their second marriage from 1847 to Caroline Weiss von Starkenfels. He had four children from his first marriage and five children from his second marriage.

Act

From 1819 he worked as an engineer for the Innsbruck building department, whose responsibility then stretched from Lake Garda to Lake Constance, and was involved in surveying work as well as road and hydraulic engineering projects. In 1826 he became an assistant to the Bregenz district engineer. His tasks included buildings such as B. the wooden Gschwendtobel bridge and various canals. Individual churches were also built according to his plans during this time. In the negotiations on regulation work on the Alpine Rhine , the forerunners of the later Rhine regulation , he also gained a high reputation in neighboring Switzerland. The good contact with the St. Gallen politician Gallus Jakob Baumgartner meant that in 1832 he switched to the newly created and much better paid position of hydraulic engineering and road inspector for the Swiss canton of St. Gallen . In 1835 he became chief engineer of the merchant class in the city of Zurich, where he managed, among other things, the new construction of the Münsterbrücke (1836–1838) over the Limmat in collaboration with the master carpenter Conrad Stadler, who built the sophisticated wooden support structure. He also built the new Kornhaus in Zurich on today's Sechseläutenplatz . It was created by Negrelli in 1838–1839 and began operating on May 8, 1840. In 1867 it was converted into a concert hall and demolished again in 1896.

In the years up to 1840 he was also appointed by the federal government to various commissions, for which he also worked in Uri , Ticino and Valais . During this time he also initiated the construction of a Swiss railway network and began planning work on behalf of the Zurich Chamber of Commerce for the later Spanish Brötli Railway from Zurich to Baden in the canton of Aargau . On a study trip to England, Belgium and France, he found out about the state of rail technology. In 1836 he published a much-noticed article about his observations, in which he propagated the use of steam locomotives on adhesive railways in mountainous countries.

In 1840 he returned to Austria and became General Inspector of the Kaiser-Ferdinand-Nordbahngesellschaft . In a very short time he completed the route Vienna - Lundenburg ( Břeclav ) - Olomouc (Olomouc). Subsequently, as General Inspector of Austria's first state railway, the kk Northern State Railway, he was responsible for the construction of the Olomouc - Pardubice ( Pardubice ) - Prague lines , from Brno to Moravská Třebová , from Prague via Aussig ( Ústí) nad Labem ) to Tetschen-Bodenbach ( Děčín -Podmokly) on the German border and from Lundenburg via Ostrau ( Ostrava ) to Oderberg ( Bohumín ) on the Polish border. In Prague, the railway bridge he built still bears the name Negrelliho viadukt (Negrelli Bridge), which was the first railway bridge over the Vltava and, at 1110 m, the longest bridge in Europe until 1910.

In addition to the construction of the lines, he also negotiated the connection of the Austrian railways to the continuing lines to Dresden and Krakow and prepared the preliminary studies for the Galician railway from Krakow via Bochnia and Dębica in what is now Poland to Lemberg (Lviv) and on to Brody in today's Ukraine (then on the border with the Russian Empire) as well as for the route from Lviv to Chernivtsi in what was then Bukovina , now also in Ukraine. He also prepared an expert opinion for the Kingdom of Württemberg on the plans for the Württemberg railways and their connections to the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Grand Duchy of Baden . At the request of the government of the Kingdom of Saxony , Negrelli and Friedrich August von Pauli , the technical director of the Bavarian Ludwigs-Süd-Nord-Bahn , prepared an expert opinion on the further construction of the Göltzschtalbrücke , the largest brick bridge in the world, for the Saxon-Bavarian Railway Company ( Leipzig – Hof railway line ).

At the same time he clarified the possibilities of building the first railway connection for the Confederates and took over the construction of the first section from Zurich to Baden as technical director of the northern railway . This first Swiss railway, for which the young Negrelli had already drawn up plans, went down in Swiss history under the name of the Spanish Brötli Railway .

In 1848, as head of the railway system in the Ministry of Public Works, he achieved that the Semmering Railway was built according to the plans of Carl von Ghega . In 1849 he was sent to the Habsburg Kingdom of Lombardy-Veneto , ruled by Radetzky , to repair the war damage to the traffic routes. He quickly restored the Milan - Treviglio and Vicenza - Padua lines , which continued until Mestre , continued work on the Vicenza - Verona line and completed the Como - Milan line. Radetzky expressed his appreciation several times, so that Negrelli was appointed to the board of the building department for water, road and rail construction of the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia in Verona, where he devoted himself to the further expansion of the traffic routes in northern Italy. In 1850 he also became President of the International Po Shipping Commission and shortly thereafter also President of the International Commission for Central Italy's Central Railways. In 1855 he returned to Vienna, where he was appointed Ministerialrat and General Inspector of the Imperial and Royal Austrian State Railways .

Negrelli and the Suez Canal

The height difference between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea of more than nine meters, which was determined on the basis of his measurements during Napoleon's Egyptian expedition by Jacques-Marie Le Père, had by no means brought the idea of ​​connecting the two seas to a standstill. The Saint-Simonists had been concerned with the subject since around 1820, Linant de Bellefonds had toured the isthmus several times in the years from 1822 before he worked in the Egyptian canal administration, and FR Chesney prepared a report on the canal construction in 1830.

Negrelli had been dealing with the subject since around 1836. In 1846 he became a member of the Société d'Études du Canal de Suez founded by Prosper Enfantin , which also included the engineers Paulin Talabot and Robert Stephenson . Three groups sent by this society in September 1847 investigated the possibilities of building a canal, with the best possible support from Linant-Bey. While Paul-Adrien Bourdaloue and his survey team found that there was no relevant difference in altitude between the two seas, Negrelli investigated in particular the conditions on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea that was considered for the mouth of the canal.

As a result of the revolutions of 1848 and other circumstances, the Société d'Études had to cease its activities, Negrelli himself was fully occupied by his tasks in northern Italy.

Years later, Lesseps received the first concession to build the Suez Canal on November 30, 1854 from the recently appointed Viceroy Muhammad Said , to whom he was on friendly terms from his previous diplomatic activities in Egypt .

Negrelli was appointed by Lesseps in 1855 to be a member of the International Commission on the Penetration of the Isthmus of Suez and, together with four other members, traveled from November 18, 1855 to January 2, 1856, in particular the Isthmus of Suez . During the deliberations of the commission from June 23-25, 1856 in Paris, his ideas of a lock-free canal on the route proposed by him in 1847 (which largely coincided with the route in the preliminary draft of Linant-Bey and Mougel-Bey) were used without containment adopted the bitter lakes, which was recorded in the consultation minutes (without naming names). The commission adopted these ideas in its 195-page final report of December 1856, which laid down all the details of the future canal. Lesseps published the final report, including the consultation minutes, plans and profiles, as soon as possible.

This final report and the previous minutes of the meeting (as well as other works on the future Suez Canal) were easily accessible to interested parties. Negrelli himself presented the KK Geographische Gesellschaft in Vienna with a copy of Lesseps' book Le Percement de l'Isthme de Suez with the complete report of the International Commission on March 3, 1857, and gave a lecture on the status of this society on March 31, 1857 of the things.

With regard to the Suez Canal project, Negrelli wrote in "Egypt's Current Means of Transport and Communication" in 1856:

" The connection of the two seas by means of a maritime canal is therefore both for the development of world trade by shortening the route between Europe and the rich countries of the ancient world on the Indian Ocean, and for the stimulation of Egypt's coastal voyage, connected with the flourishing of the inner welfare of this blessed land, an indisputable necessity. "

For June 1858, Negrelli had planned another trip to Alexandria to meet Lesseps there. Since Lesseps had to go to London, however, Negrelli used the vacation that had already been granted for this trip to relax in an Italian spa town. On the return trip he attended a railway congress in Trieste . Negrelli returned to Vienna suffering from serious illness, but nevertheless wrote a reply in the Oesterreichische Zeitung of September 26, 1858 against an article by Robert Stephenson , who had made little qualified statements against the Suez Canal. On October 1, 1858, he succumbed to his ailments. He could no longer experience the founding of the Suez Canal Society and the official opening of construction work on April 25, 1859.

Honors

Honors during your lifetime

Order of the Iron Crown III. class

During his lifetime Negrelli was highly celebrated as a railway engineer in Austria, honored and honored many times. On October 20, 1850, Negrelli was awarded the Order of the Iron Crown III by Emperor Franz Joseph for his services . Excellent class and due to the statutes of the order as "Ritter Negrelli von Moldelbe" raised to the Austrian hereditary knighthood . Negrelli chose the title " von Moldelbe " in memory of his work on the Moldau and Elbe , as he did not want to accept an Italian name suggested to him because of his critical attitude towards the action taken during the reconquest of Venice .

The coat of arms, awarded on the occasion of his elevation to the Austrian knighthood, was divided into two parts: at the top, in silver, a red-clad arm breaking out of the left margin, with a crown placed on the palm of the hand; in the middle two five-pointed silver stars side by side in blue; at the bottom a red bar in gold. Two crowned helmets, on them: I three ostrich feathers silver-blue-gold; II a closed, golden flight covered with two red bars. Helmet covers: blue-silver; red-gold.

Negrelli von Moldelbe was an honorary citizen of Prague and Olomouc, received orders from Saxony, Württemberg, Prussia and Parma, a special diploma from Switzerland as thanks for his services, a medal from the city of Zurich and various awards from the Lombardy-Venetian kingdom.

Posterity, myth-making

After his death, Negrelli was soon forgotten, probably also because the first state railway phase in Austria was coming to an end.

It only came back into public attention towards the end of the century, when his now widowed daughter Maria Groiss, more than 30 years after the death of her father, brought allegations against Lesseps and years of trials in Alexandria and Paris against the heirs of Lesseps and the Suez Canal Led society . Apparently, she claimed that Lesseps used Negrelli's plans to build the Suez Canal without ever naming Negrelli's name, and thus pretended to be the author of the Suez Canal plans. In particular, at the celebration of the opening of the Suez Canal on November 17, 1869, he neither mentioned nor appreciated that Negrelli had been the planner of the Suez Canal and was celebrated as the sole builder of the Suez Canal. The trials, which lasted almost twenty years, yielded no results. However, this triggered political efforts on the Italian and Austrian sides to reclaim Negrelli for themselves, which reached their climax under Hitler and Mussolini when a great-grandson of Negrelli published a "factual novel" in 1940.

According to the resulting myths, Lesseps introduced himself to Viceroy Muhammad Said as Enfantin's agent, withheld the names of the people involved in planning the canal from the public or even presented himself as the author of the planning, and he used a condolence visit to the widow To take Negrelli's plans for the Suez Canal with you or to have them procured in January 1859 by Negrelli's brother-in-law, who was in direct, secret contact with Prince Metternich , for a payment of 20,000 francs, or to buy the widow's plans for 20,000 guilders.

It ignores the fact that Muhammad Said had invited his good friend Lesseps to Egypt and Lesseps did not have to introduce himself there, that Enfantin had long since turned to other tasks in the seven years since the Société d'Études, that the diplomat Lesseps The fact that the International Commission on the Penetration of the Isthmus of Suez listed all members by name in its final report of December 1856, including Negrelli, and had decided and described all the details of the future canal, starting from the route above, never dealt directly with technical questions the depth and width up to curve radii and evasions. This report, including his plans, was immediately published in book form by Lesseps and was therefore accessible to all interested parties. The canal could be built on this basis. No further plans for the canal were required, apart from plans for the construction site facilities (e.g. where storage areas and the small construction site railroad were to be created), which are usually created by subordinate engineers or technicians. The frequently repeated claim that Negrelli was appointed inspector general of the Suez Canal by the viceroy in 1857 does not seem credible (unless it was a pure honorary testimony), since Lesseps was at that time still fully occupied by the political resistance of England and therefore not yet once founded the Suez Canal Society. In addition, Negrelli would have had to resign from the Imperial and Royal Civil Service for this activity and would have had to work under Linant de Bellefonds, who worked in the Egyptian administration, which is difficult to imagine.

The accusation that Lesseps failed to honor Negrelli's authorship of the Suez Canal plans when the canal was opened is absurd. It was a celebration of the rulers of the affected states, who were by no means interested in who more than ten years ago had what merit in building the canal. After the opening it was about the actual completion of the canal, the poor financial situation of the company and the dispute over the canal fees, which was almost carried out with military means. Questions about the authorship of previous plans were not an issue. Incidentally, Negrelli might have had a decisive influence on the International Commission, but the plans she published were formally her plans (which also took into account contributions from other commissioners) and not Negrelli's plans. Any prominent mention of Negrelli would in all probability have led to diplomatic entanglements with other members or their countries.

Later honors

Grave at Vienna Central Cemetery (2018)

Since 1929 Negrelli has been resting in a grave of honor in the Vienna Central Cemetery (group 32 A, number 23).

In Trento (Piazza Dante) a monument (1930) commemorates Negrelli, who came from Trentino.

In Prague-Karlín the long railway bridge he built from stone arches over the Vltava was named after him: Negrelliho viaduct or Negrelli bridge .

An Alois-Negrelli-Gasse reminds of him, a small alley in the 21st district of Vienna, which, 400 meters long, connects Donaufelder Straße with Neumanngasse. Streets named after him can also be found in more than ten other Austrian places, mainly in Vorarlberg, as well as in about as many Italian places. In Gossau in the canton of St. Gallen and in Munich-Aubing there is a new Negrellistraße. In Zurich, the city council decided on November 21, 2007 to name a new pedestrian bridge to be built over the railway area at Zurich main station, the Negrellisteg . The city of Zurich honored the Austrian engineer who, 160 years earlier, had connected Switzerland and Zurich to the age of the railways. In 2012, the prestigious building (30 million Swiss francs) by Flint & Neill Limited, London and explorations architecture, Paris was temporarily shelved from savings. Negrelli's monument in Egypt has disappeared since the Six Day War .

One of the EuroCity trains on the Szczecin - Berlin - Dresden - Prague route was named Alois Negrelli in 2011 . In the 2016 summer timetable, the EC 178 Prague – Berlin and the EC 179 Hamburg Altona – Prague operate under this name.

The 64 m long exhibition ship MS Negrelli sails on the Danube for via donau .

In Tschagguns, Montafon, directly on the Ill cycle path, the Negrelli fountain has been a reminder of his achievements in regulating the Ill since 2002.

Publications

  • Luigi Negrelli: Excursion to France, England and Belgium to observe the railways there, with an appendix on the use of railways in mountainous countries . L. Negrelli, chief engineer of the merchant class in Zurich. Frauenfeld 1838. ( Online at ALO ).
  • Alois Negrelli von Moldelbe: The present means of transport and communication in Egypt with relation to the proposed penetration of the Isthmus of Suez . 1856.
  • The railways with the use of the ordinary steam car as a moving force over hills and watersheds are feasible. A proposal based on experience and presented in practice. Beck'sche Universitäts-Buchhandlung, Vienna 1842 ( digitized version )
  • Via mountain railways , Vienna 1842
  • Expert opinion on the construction of a wheelchair-accessible bridge over the Limmat in Zurich, a new granary and port , 1834
  • The Münster Bridge in Zurich , 1844

literature

  • Constantin von Wurzbach : Negrelli von Moldelbe, Alois Ritter von . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 20th part. Kaiserlich-Königliche Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, Vienna 1869, pp. 123–129 ( digitized version ). * Negrelli von Moldelbe, Alois. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 7, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1978, ISBN 3-7001-0187-2 , p. 56 f. (Direct links on p. 56 , p. 57 ).
  • Alfred Birk: Alois von Negrelli . 1st edition. Braumüller, Vienna 1915 (2nd edition 1925).
  • Nikolaus Negrelli-Moldelbe: The Lie of Suez. The struggle for life of the German engineer Alois von Negrelli . Vorwerk, Darmstadt / Berlin 1940.
  • Peter Bußjäger , Josef Concin, Karl Gerstgrasser: Alois Negrelli and his traces in Vorarlberg (1822 - 1832) . A regional and administrative history investigation. History Association Region Bludenz, Bludenz 1997, ISBN 3-901833-00-5 .
  • Josef Dultinger : Alois Negrelli: Knight of Moldelbe: the fate of a great South Tyrolean . Rauchdruck, Innsbruck 1993, DNB  944211682 .
  • Percement de l'isthme de Suez. Rapport et Projet de la Commission Internationale . Documents Publiés by M. Ferdinand de Lesseps. Troisième série. Paris aux bureaux de l'Isthme de Suez, Journal de l'Union des deux Mers, et chez Henri Plon, Éditeur, 1856 ( digitized in the Google book search; French; foreword by Lesseps, complete report of the International Commission, without the in Original included maps, profiles etc.)
  • Communications from the Imperial-Royal Geographical Society ( online ; PDF; 21.7 MB), 1st year 1857, edited by Franz Foetterle ; Vienna, 1857 (on p. 67/275: Negrelli's report on the piercing of the Isthmus of Suez to the Imperial and Royal Geographic Society by the commission elected for this purpose )

Web links

Commons : Luigi Negrelli  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A. Pauser and M. Pauser: Alois Negrelli, Ritter von Moldelbe; a pioneer of traffic route construction at the beginning of industrialization in the 1999 yearbook of the VDI-Gesellschaft Bautechnik, p. 319 ff
  2. ↑ other information: eleven
  3. ↑ a b c d e f Biographical Lexicon of the Austrian Empire
  4. ^ Daniel Vischer:  Negrelli Knights of Moldelbe, Alois (also Luigi). In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 19, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-428-00200-8 , p. 34 f. ( Digitized version ).
  5. ^ A b c d e Wolfgang Bahr: The engineer from Primör in Austria-Lexikon
  6. ↑ a b Austrian Biographical Lexicon (PDF; 157 kB) p. 56
  7. ^ Parish of St. Peter and Paul (Lustenau): Church history of the parish of St. Peter and Paul. Archived from the original on April 7, 2014 ; accessed on June 25, 2020 : "Church was planned by Ing. Negrelli (builder of the Suez Canal)."
  8. ^ Church of St. Laurentius - Sulzberg. Retrieved on March 31, 2014 : "The plan for the current parish church was designed by Alois Negrelli."
  9. ↑ a b c d Austrian Biographical Lexicon (PDF; 169 kB) p. 57
  10. ↑ Negrelli Bridge (English)
  11. ↑ So he himself in his lecture to the KK Geographische Gesellschaft on March 31, 1857: Mittheilungen der Kaiserlich-Königliche Geographische Gesellschaft , p. 120; with the report on the piercing of the Isthmus of Suez to the Imperial and Royal Geographic Society by the commission elected for this purpose (treatise IV, p. 67)
  12. ^ Cover page of the report of the French group
  13. ^ Percement de l'isthme de Suez. Rapport et Projet de la Commission Internationale . Documents Publiés by M. Ferdinand de Lesseps. Troisième série. Paris aux bureaux de l'Isthme de Suez, Journal de l'Union des deux Mers, et chez Henri Plon, Éditeur, 1856. Digitized on Google Books (French; preface by Lesseps, complete report of the International Commission, without the original Cards, profiles etc.)
  14. ↑ BIBLIOTHECA AEGYPTIACA , repertory on the writings published up to 1857 relating to Egypt ... by Dr. H. Jolowicz , Leipzig, Verlag von Wilhelm Engelmann, 1858. (Bibliography, p. 77: The Canal von Suez ; among others with: "Bellefonds, Linant de. Canalisation de l'Isthme de Suèz, ... 1854" and with " Extraits des procès-verbaux des séances de la commission internationale de Canal de Suèz, Paris 1856 ")
  15. ^ Foetterle in the introduction to the report on the piercing of the isthmus of Suez to the Imperial and Royal Geographic Society (pp. 67/275) of the yearbook
  16. ↑ eLib: Quotes and Aphorisms (Alois Negrelli von Moldelbe)
  17. ^ Franz Gall : Austrian heraldry. Handbook of coat of arms science. 2nd edition Böhlau Verlag, Vienna 1992, p. 386, ISBN 3-205-05352-4 .
  18. ^ Table of contents of the Maria Groiss estate ( memento from July 6, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 65 kB) compiled by the Comitato per la documentazione delle attività italiane in Africa, Roma; from March 20, 1969 ( Italian )
  19. ↑ The Tyrolean Road on echo-online
  20. ↑ Tindaro Gatani: Il contributo degli Italiani all'impresa di Suez ( Memento of March 8, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 5.0 MB) in La Rivista, February 2010, p. 49 (Italian)
  21. ↑ frWP
  22. ↑ cf. History of the Suez Canal
  23. ↑ A large building project today requires a large number of plans that can no longer be drawn up by a single person. At the beginning of the Suez Canal, however, it was only a matter of digging up sand on the established route in the empty desert (mostly with your bare hands!) And carrying it sideways into the desert with baskets ( à la couffe ). The later use of machines accelerated this work, but it did not make it any more complex. The real difficulty of the construction project lay in the logistics, that is, in supplying the thousands of workers with food and sanitary supplies and in supplies for the machines.
  24. ↑ Lists in Google Maps
  25. ↑ http://www.gebrueder-duerst.ch/turicum/bruecken/negrellisteg.html
  26. ↑ Negrellisteg project competition April 11, 2011 (PDF; 2.7 MB)
  27. ↑ http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/zuerich/stadt/Negrellisteg-Stadt-stoppt-Planung/story/19234640 Negrellisteg: City stops planning
  28. ↑ Zugverzeichnis for 2010/2011 EC 178 Alois Negrelli: Prague, Berlin, Stettin; EC 179 Stettin Berlin Dresden Děčín Prague
  29. ^ Train route: EC 178 Alois Negrelli. czech-transport.com, accessed May 13, 2016 .
  30. ^ Train route: EC 179 Alois Negrelli. czech-transport.com, accessed May 13, 2016 .
  31. ↑ The history of the MS Negrelli ( Memento from August 1, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
personal data
SURNAME Negrelli of Moldelbe, Alois
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Negrelli, Luigi
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian transport engineer (Suez Canal)
DATE OF BIRTH January 23, 1799
PLACE OF BIRTH Fiera di Primiero
DATE OF DEATH October 1, 1858
Place of death Vienna