Johann Wilhelm Schwedler

Schwedler attended the Friedrich Werder Training College in Berlin and the Berlin Building Academy. He passed a building inspector examination in 1852 and thereafter was employed in various post in the Prussian State Building Authority, finally becoming Privy Senior Building Counsellor (1873) and as such the final authority on all larger engineering structures in Prussia. Schwedler designed important engineering structures and developed new types of loadbearing assemblies – Schwedler's cupola and Schwedler's truss – which had an influence on German iron structures in the last third of the 19th century. As an active member of the Berlin Architecture Society, a member of the editorial staff of the Zeitschrift für Bauwesen and the teaching staff of the Building Academy (1864–73), he supplied notable contributions to the theory of structures. His greatest achievement in the realm of structural theory is, however, his truss theory, published in 1851, which together with that of Culmann became the “signature” of the establishment phase of structural theory.

Main contributions to structural analysis:

• Theorie der Brückenbalkensysteme [1851];
• Die Construction der Kuppeldächer [1866]

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; S. 763

Participation in the following structures & large-scale projects:

• Fichtebunker
• Second Nogat River Bridge at Malbork
• Tczew Bridge