Josef Ressel

The Ressel family circumstances at the time of their residence in Chrudim remain somewhat unclear. The inventor's father, Anton Herrmann Ressel, was a German; his mother, Marie Anna Konvicka apparently was Czech.

Josef Ressel left Chrudim 1n 1806, in order to enroll at the Gymnasium in Austrian Linz. From there we follow him to the artillery training center in Ceske Budejovice, the university in Vienna and, later still, to the forestry school in Mariabrunn near Vienna. Upon his graduation from the latter, he worked as a forester in Slovenia. Finally, we find him in the position of an intendant in the Austrian navy, posted in Terst. He died in 1857 in Lubljana while on a service-connected trip, without ever having received the least acknowledgement for his invention.

The statue of Josef Ressel has stood in front of the County Museum since 1924.

Ing. Rudolf Ressel, a former Yugoslav citizen and the inventor's grandson, became a Czech citizen domiciled in Chrudim in 1938. He was one of Josef Ressel's many descendants who had lived in Yugoslavia, Italy and Germany.

Statue of Ressel
Beside old Chrudim theatre - today place of KB bank