Christian Raisz

* Toporc, 1766 – † Körtvélyes, 13 August 1849 / road construction engineer, surveyor, cave explorer ; ; He completed his engineering studies at the Institutum Geometricum in Buda in 1791. After obtaining his diploma, he first became a chamber engineer, then the chief engineer of Gömör and Kis-Hont counties. From 1807 he was the district engineer of the Esterházy estates. He is credited with the design and construction of one of the most difficult sections of the road connecting Košice with Rozsnyo, the Žatskői road. Sometime in the late 1790s or in 1801, he was the first to survey the Baradla cave in Aggtelek with scientific thoroughness: he made a floor plan and a longitudinal section of it, and provided a detailed description. This was the first map of the cave to be printed in the collection of maps published by Görög Demeter of the counties of Hungary (Magyar Átlás, 1802). A German version of the map of the cave with inscriptions was published in 1807, and a Russian version in 1815. Raisz mistakenly assumed that the cave was created by fire, which is why his other important and correct findings were also received with skepticism. He spent the last period of his life in Körtvélyesen with his family and grandchildren. The family tombstone on the edge of the village reads: “Here RAISZ KERESZTÉLY, engineer, builder of the Szoroskő road, b. 1766. d. 1849 and his wife SZONTAGH KRISZTINA, sleep their eternal dreams”. Below this are the children and grandchildren of the couple, members of the Raisz and Lükő families.