GHEGA, Karl Ritter von

Due to his achievements in the construction of roads, bridges and railways and his spectacular design of the Semmering Railway, the first mountain railway in the world, G. is considered one of the most important engineers of the 19th century. He was born as the son of naval officer Anthon G. in Venice. From 1814 to 1817 he attended the St. Anne's military college where he gained philosophical and mathematical education. He studied at the Academy of fine arts in Venice from 1817 to 1819 and at the University of Padua, where he took the examination for doctor of mathematics at the age of 17 and passed it with honours. He began his engineering career in 1819 with road and hydraulic engineering in Venice, where he worked until 1836 and then – after several years – again from 1840 to the 1842. He was responsible for the design and the construction of transport routes and from 1833 for all the tasks of State Construction Service. The year 1836 brought about a decisive change in G.’s life. It was that year that the construction of the Emperor Ferdinand North Railway, the first Austrian railway, began. He stopped working for the State administration in Venice and began working for the newly-formed company. On behalf of this company he embarked on a study tour to England, Germany and Belgium, where he became acquainted with the railways of Western Europe and then as a senior engineer managed the design and construction of individual sections of the North Railway. Within four years he gained a lot of experience and knowledge in the rail industry. In 1840 he was called back to Venice, where he again had to enter the civil service. He was transferred to the Tyrol, where he again devoted two years of his life to construction of roads and bridges, and among other things, made designs for the mountain roads through the Val Sugana valley and Finstermünzpass pass. When at the end of 1841 Austria decided to build the state railways, the newly founded Directorate-General due to his excellent knowledge of constructing railways proposed G. to be the technical supervisor of building the demanding route of the southern state railway line to Trieste, which included also the construction of railways across the Semmering massif. In 1842 he was via England sent to the USA in order to consider the progress in the construction of mountain railways. G. returned with a strong believe that the rail crossing Semmering is possible with a fully powered adhesion. In the next six years, while he was familiar with all the design and construction of the Southern Railway, he as a supervisor of the General Directorate completed a railway line section Mürzzuschlag - Graz (1844) and section Graz - Celje (1846) and submitted a plan for the construction of railway line across the Semmering: continuous adhesion line with maximum gradient, viaducts and tunnels. Although there were divided opinions about the project, he succeeded in its realization and started with the construction of Semmering Railway from Gloggnitz to Mürzzuschlag in the summer of 1848. Almost simultaneously his career began to rise in the civil service: in 1848 he was the division superintendent of state railways and departmental adviser, in 1849 the Head of Railway construction section at the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Public Buildings, in 1850 the head of state construction department, while two years later becoming the Head of the Central railway construction Directorate – a responsibility joint with the task to construct the entire national railway, except the Lombardy-Venice line. As early as 1854 he submitted a programme draft for construction of railway for the entire Danube monarchy. If the Semmering railway was opened without any celebration in 1854, the 1857 opening of the southern state railways in Trieste triumphed.
Selling the state railways to private railway companies, which started in 1854 and led to the dissolvement of the Central Directorate in 1859, represented an important turning point in G. life, for he dealt with elderly affairs of state railways, which came under the Ministry of Finance, and he was not qualified for this post anymore. In addition to writing several publications, G. also developed surveying devices – e.g. substantially improved levelling board and Octants with Nonius for determining curves. G. remained unmarried. In 1851 he was elevated to knighthood and in 1869 – nine years after his death – a monument was erected to his memory at the Semmering station.