Josef Prošek

Josef František Prošek ( Bulgarian Йозеф Прошек ) (born March 17, 1861 in Beraun , Bohemia; † 1928 ) was a Czech architect and geometer who spent many years in Bulgaria. He is the brother of Václav Prošek (1860–1913) and the cousin of Jiří Prošek (1847–1905) and Theodor Prošek (1858–1905). All four came from Beroun, 30 km southwest of Prague.

Life

From 1880 to 1881 Josef Prošek studied at the Czech Polytechnic in Prague. His cousin Jiří Prošek came to the Balkans as a railway engineer as early as 1870 and was heavily involved in the national liberation struggle of the Bulgarians. After the end of the Russo-Ottoman War of 1877/78, which ended with the liberation of Bulgaria, Josef Prošek stayed in Sofia for the first time from 1878 to 1880 .

In 1881 he returned to Sofia and worked in the directorate for public buildings until 1886. From 1884 to 1886 he was assistant to the architect Friedrich Grünanger (1856-1929) in the construction management of the parliament building of Narodno Sabranie , then deputy director of the technical department of the city of Sofia.

Václav Prošek, Josef Prošek's brother, came to Sofia in 1886 after studying architecture (1879 to 1885) at the invitation of his cousins ​​Jiří / Georgi and Theodor / Bogdan Prošek.

In 1879 the Czech architect Lubor Beier designed the first urban development plan for Sofia for the mayor of Sofia. His assistants were Jiří / Georgi Prošek and Vaclav Raubal . They invited Josef Prošek to Sofia to work on this plan. The plan was completed and approved on January 3, 1880. The plan saw a ring road system with the boulevards “Vasil Levski”, “Patriarch Evtimi”, “Christo Botew”, “Slivnitsa” and “Volgograd”. The plan designed by Prošek (Prošek Plan) went down in Sofia history as the Battenberg Plan of Sofia - named after Alexander I of Battenberg , Prince of Bulgaria from 1879 to 1886. The urban development plan was laid out on the steep slope of an American city : the capital was divided into squares with small streets running between them, and in each parcel there were five to six, at most 10 houses with courtyards.

Josef Prošek built the Lion Bridge (built from 1888 to 1891) and the Eagle Bridge (built from 1889 to 1891) together with his cousins ​​Jiří / Georgi and Theodor / Bogdan Prošek .

In 1905 Josef Prošek was appointed architect II category of the Sofia municipality. Later he and his brother Václav returned to Bohemia.

literature

• Grigor Doytchinov, Christo Gantchev: Austrian architects in Bulgaria 1878-1918 . Verlag Böhlau, Vienna 2001, ISBN 3-205-99343-8 ; Page 179