Jan Perner

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Jan Perner

Jan Perner , also Johann Perner, (born September 7, 1815 in Bratschitz near Časlau , Kingdom of Bohemia , Austrian Empire , † September 10, 1845 in Pardubitz ) was a Bohemian railway engineer.

Life

Watermill in Bratčice: Jan Perner's birthplace
Negrelli Viaduct in Prague
Drawing of the Chotzen tunnel: Perners accident site

Perner was born the son of a miller. He attended the elementary school in Potěhy from 1822 to 1827 , then the Tein school in Prague until 1830 . Contrary to his father's wishes, he began training at the Polytechnic School in Prague, which he finished as an engineer in 1833 . He had financed his studies himself as a tutor. First he was an assistant in the economic office in Gitschin and clerk in Milíčeves .

In 1836 he applied for an advertisement and, after joint study trips through England and Belgium, initially worked as an Imperial Russian engineer for Franz Anton von Gerstner in 1836 when building the Tsarskoye Selo Railway near Saint Petersburg. Because of the slow construction progress, as a result of which he had a local supervisor physically punished, he was released in the same year at the instigation of the Russian authorities and had to leave Russia. He then traveled back to Austria and worked again as a clerk in Lemberg for a few months.

From June 1837 he found a job with the Kaiser Ferdinands-Nordbahn , where he initially planned the route from Lundenburg to Mährisch Weißkirchen . From the summer of 1839, Perner was the construction engineer on the railway line from Lundenburg to Brno . He was then commissioned with projection work in the section from Mährisch Ostrau to Auschwitz .

Perner was then involved in drafting the route for the rail link between Vienna and Prague. Seven variants were considered, of which the route via Olomouc and the Elbe valley was the longest. However, Perner believed in this route so much that he persuaded his relatives to speculate heavily (on land and timber). At the end of 1841 the administration decided to set up the so-called kk Northern State Railway from Olomouc to Prague and Dresden. On November 26, 1842, the Kaiser approved his design for a route from Prague to Dresden. At the same time, Perner planned the location of today's Masaryk train station in Prague.

Since March 1842 civil servant as chief engineer of the state railways, from October 1843 Perner directed the construction of the railway line from Pardubitz to Prague including the Negrelli Viaduct in Prague-Karolinenthal over the Vltava. On August 20, 1845, the line was officially opened by his superior engineer Alois Negrelli . In the spring of 1845 Perner was in charge of the routing work for the Prague-Tetschen railway line to the Saxon border.

From 1842 he lived in Prague. There he moved in the circles of the Bohemian patriots, his greatest interest was the Czech-language theater. He worked in the association for the encouragement of the industrialist spirit in Bohemia and counted leading members of the patriot movement such as František Ladislav Rieger and Antonín Strobach among his friends.

When returning from a business trip from Moravia, three weeks after the opening of the railway line he had built, he leaned out of the moving train after exiting the Chotzen tunnel and bumped his head against a signal post. He only collapsed when he got off at Pardubice. He died a day later as a result of the head injuries. Perner was buried at the Pardubice city cemetery St. Johannes. Perner thus became the first victim of a railway accident in Bohemia.

Honors

Bear the name Jan Perner:

  • the transport science faculty of the University of Pardubice ( Dopravní fakulta Jana Pernera ) [1]
  • an InterCity train operated by the Czech rail company České dráhy
  • various streets and squares in Pardubitz, Bratschitz, Böhmisch-Trübau, Prague, Ostrau and Uvaly u Prahy.

On the occasion of his 200th birthday, the Jan Perner Society was founded in Pardubitz in 2015.

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Perner, Jan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czech patriot and railway builder
DATE OF BIRTH September 7, 1815
PLACE OF BIRTH Bratčice u Čáslavi
DATE OF DEATH September 10, 1845
Place of death Pardubice