NEGRELLI, Alois Ritter von Moldelbe

Due to his achievements in the field of railway constructions, road and water constructions N. is considered to be one of the most important engineers of his time. He was born as the seventh child to the Italian landowner Angelo Michel N. and his wife German Tyrol in southeren Tyrol and grew up in an bilingual environment. He was initially taught at home, later he attended boarding school. From 1812 to 1817 he attendet monastic school in Feltre. After graduation he enrolled in the study of fine arts in Venedigo and later he studied at the universities in Padova and Innsbruck.
In 1819 he had entered the Austrian civil service and worked with the Service Manager of Tyrol and Voralberg province as an engineering trainee. In addition, he continued to devote to his studies in the field of construction technology at the University of Innsbruck and in 1820 gained the title of graduate engineer in the Innsburg National Directorate of Construction. During his service in Tyrol he was concerned with work measurements, as well as water and road constructions. From 1826 he participated in projects in the field of water constructions in Vorarlberg, inter alia, regulation of the river Ren. In 1832 N. left the Austrian Civil Service and accepted a well-paid job in Switzerland, where he was employed as the road and water construction inspector by St. Gallen canton. Among the many roads and bridges, carried out by N. during his eight years of operation the Münsterbrücke, bridge over the Limmat river in Zurich is the most famous one. At the end of 1830, he returned from academic journey in England, France and Germany and after that became involved in the plans for the Swiss Northern Railway from Zurich to Baden and other Swiss railways, which began to build only about ten years later. In the meantime he became well-known in the railway circles and in 1840 returned to his homeland Austria, where he worked as the chief inspector in Emperor Ferdinand’s railway company. In the next two years he completed the plans and layouts for the relevant sections of the Northern Line.

The division of the Austrian Railways on public and private in 1842 led to N.’s employment. By then he has already been recognized as the railway expert at the new country’s railways. Because of that, he was initially suspended by the Northern Railway Company but later finally took over the northern state line railways. In this position he ws able to complete the relevant sections of Olomouc – Prague, Prague - Podmokly and Brno - Česká Třebova lines by 1848. At the same time he controled the construction of the Swiss Northern Railway.
His short-term activity as the Head of the railway affairs at the Ministry of Labour, during which he decided to to support the construction of Semmering railway, which was planned by Karl Ritter von →Ghege, was soon completed due to the Revolution in 1848. At the end of 1848 he initially became the State Commissioner for repairing the destroyed Lombardo-Venice railway line, but was appointed head by higher office in 1849 an had jurisdiction over water construction and construction of roads and railways. In addition, he was the president of the International Commission for the Navigation of the River Po and member of the International Commission for the construction of the central Italian Railways. From 1855 he was president of the Lombardy-Venetian Directorate for Railways.
Due to disagreements, referring to the direction of the Office he was relieved from his position and called back to Vienna, where in the last years of his life he acted as an advisor to the Vienna Department of Commerce and as the Inspector-General of Austrian railways.
N.'s most important achievement is the plan for Suez Canal. Already in 1846 he was invited to Paris to a newly created study group for the construction of the Suez Canal. He was engaged in plans for the construction of the canal for ten years. At the end of 1855 he went on a study tour in Egypt with the newly formed International Commission for the Suez Canal, which replaced the earlier study group. In 1856 the Commission unanimously adopted his ideas for moving barriers and planned direction of the canal. In 1857 he was appointed Inspector General for the construction of the canal, but he did not live to see the beginning of the construction, which began in 1859.
N.’s spiritual authorship in the construction of the Suez Canal remained unknown to the public until the early 20th century. Frenchman Ferdinand Lesseps built the canal according to N.’s plans. The canal was solemnly opened in 1869, eleven years after N.’s death. Lesseps has been celebrated as the sole creator of the Canal. N.'s name was not mentioned anywhere.
Only the procedure that was led by his daughter in the early 20th century, posthumously awarded him for his merits.
In 1850 he was elevated to knighthood with the nickname that he chose for himself, and it was read as "Moldelbe", which relates to its activity in the Vltava (Moldau) area and Labe (Elbe) near Prague. From 1828 to 1840 he was married to Amalie Pircker von Pirkenau, but in 1847 he got married for the second time with Carolina von Weiß-Starkenfels.