The bust of the designer and inventor Viktor Kaplan, which the people of Brno know from the intersection of Úvoz and Údolní streets, has found a new home in the foyer of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the Brno University of Technology. The faculty incorporates a Department of Fluid Engineering, which builds on the inventor's legacy and, with the permission of the family, bears his name. Therefore, the inventor's granddaughter Gerlind Weber and her family also arrived at the unveiling of the restored statue on June 4.

The bust of Viktor Kaplan by sculptor Sylva Lacinová-Jílková was created in 1959. It was located on the corner of Úvoz and Údolní streets, in front of the building of the former Institute of Anatomy, later the seat of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the Brno University of Technology. Viktor Kaplan, the inventor of the famous Kaplan turbine, lived nearby at the beginning of the last century, but he made his inventions in a laboratory about a kilometre away in the building of today's Masaryk University.

Brno University of Technology – but which one? Viktor Kaplan is sometimes mistakenly associated with BUT. The commonly used shortening of its name to "Brno Technology" may cause confusion. At that time, however, there were two technical schools in Brno that operated side by side: The German Technical University in Brno (Deutsche Technische Hochschule Brünn) was a German-language university, that operated from 1873 to 1945 and was located in a building at 2 Komenského náměstí, where the Faculty of Social Studies of Masaryk University is located today. It was officially abolished along with other German universities by a presidential decree after the 2nd World War, and its property fell to Czech-speaking universities in Brno. The Brno University of Technology was founded in 1899 in response to the emancipation of the Czech-speaking population of Brno, who wanted to have their own university with Czech as the language of instruction. On 19 September 1899, the Imperial Decree established the Franz Joseph Imperial and Royal Czech Technical University in Brno, whose name changed in 1956 to today's Brno University of Technology.

Attentive residents of the city certainly noticed that the statue disappeared from its usual place last summer. "With regard to the planned reconstruction of the BUT campus in Údolní Street, we removed the statue as a precaution and in the meantime, it received professional restoration care," explains Jiří Hlinka, Dean of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. Subsequently, the faculty was looking for a dignified place for the portrait of the famous inventor on its premises. The paradox is that on the historical pedestal of the statue, Kaplan's name was incorrectly stated: instead of Viktor, it read Victor. "We decided to remedy this as well and placed the statue on a repaired pedestal, where the name is already flawless," adds Hlinka.

On Wednesday, June 4, the statue of Kaplan was unveiled in the presence of the inventor's family in the foyer of the faculty. On the same day, a session of the Scientific Council was held at the faculty, at which the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering awarded important personalities associated with the faculty on the occasion of the 125th anniversary of its founding. The gold medal was awarded in memoriam to Viktor Kaplan, the award was accepted by his granddaughter Professor Gerlind Weber. She also embarked on an academic career, but in a different field: she worked at the University of Vienna, where she focused on spatial planning and rural development.

Kaplan's legacy lives on

It is the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the Brno University of Technology, specifically one of its departments, that has long been committed to the legacy of the inventor, which Kaplan's family also acknowledges with gratitude. "Viktor Kaplan worked at the German Technical University in Brno, which ceased to exist in 1945. It seemed logical to us to build on the legacy of that famous inventor, who, although he was a native Austrian, is inextricably linked to Brno. That is why we contacted Kaplan's family in 1998 and obtained their kind permission to include Kaplan's name in the name of our workplace," says Pavel Rudolf, head of the Viktor Kaplan Fluid Engineering Department.

"In his time, Kaplan proposed a revolutionary concept that made it possible to process water of small gradients and large flows, a task that a number of scientists and inventors unsuccessfully fought against. A significantly new feature of the Kaplan turbine was the swivel blades of the runner, which allow better regulation and more efficient use of the hydropower potential. At the same time, Viktor Kaplan is also an example of successful technology transfer and cooperation with industry. Without the background and help of Brno industrialist Ignaz Stork, his turbine would never have been tested and made it into practice," explains Rudolf.

This department boasts more than a hundred years of tradition at the Brno University of Technology. It deals not only with the design and construction of hydraulic machines and equipment, and the design of water works but also with all machines, processes and technologies that work with fluids, in a modern concept with a multidisciplinary overlap. Promising inventions include, for example, CaviPlasma – a technology for water purification using low-temperature plasma, which can remove chemical residues from water, such as estrogens from contraceptives, and also kills pathogenic microorganisms such as cyanobacteria and bacteria. Another example is the innovative vortex turbine, which is designed for small hydroelectric power plants with even lower gradients than the Kaplan turbine.

Viktor Kaplan 27. 11. 1876 Mürzzuschlag – 23. 8. 1934 Rochuspoint near Unterach In 1895-1900 Kaplan studied at the Technical University of Vienna. He came to Brno in 1903 to start working as an employee at the German Technical University. His interest focused on water turbines, his big dream was to improve the then-successful Francis turbine, on which he worked tirelessly. With the support of Brno industrialist Ignaz Stork, he built a laboratory for water turbines at the school, and frin 1909–1912 he laid the foundations for the future Kaplan turbine. He patented his inventions in 1912 to1941, but subsequent lawsuits dragged on for 12 long years before Kaplan finally won and was granted 280 patents in 27 countries. The inventor was exhausted by the long-term conflicts, and soon afterwards he took early retirement and returned from Brno to Austria, where he died in 1934.