Johann Eytelwein

In 1779 Eytelwein was promoted to bombardier in the 1st Artillery Regiment in Berlin, where his superior at a later date was to be General von Tempelhoff – an officer who awakened in Eytelwein an understanding for the need to link engineering practice and theory. Following seven years of military service, he completed his surveying examinations. In 1790 he sat an examination for the Regional Building Department founded in 1770. Thereafter, he was employed as an inspector of dyke-building, and in 1794 was appointed Privy Senior Government Building Surveyor in the Regional Building Department in Berlin. From 1797 to 1806 he and other colleagues in the Regional Building Department published the first building journal in Germany Sammlung nützlicher Aufsätze und Nachrichten, die Baukunst betreffend. In 1799 he was one of the three founders of the Berlin Building Academy and was responsible for the mechanics of solid bodies, hydraulics and mechanical engineering. Eytelwein’s contribution to the theory of structures forms a bridge between the initial and constitution phases of structural theory. He became director of the Regional Building Department in 1809 and one year later rose to become First Secretary in the Prussian Ministry of Trade & Commerce, and in 1816 director of the Regional Building Department. He retired from Prussian state service in 1830 and was followed at the Building Academy by Peter Christian Beuth (1781–1853) and as director of the Regional Building Department by Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781–1841). He was awarded numerous honours, including a doctorate by Berlin University’s Faculty of Philosophy in 1811.

Main contributions to structural analysis:

Handbuch der Mechanik fester Körper und Hydraulik [1801, 1823, 1842]; Handbuch der Statik fester Körper [1808, 1832]. 

Source: Kurrer, Karl-Eugen The History of the Theory of Structures, Wilhelm Ernst & Sohn Verlag für Architektur und technische Wissenschaften GmbH, Berlin (Deutschland), ISBN 3-433-01838-3, 2008; p. 728/729