Petrović, Nikola: Hajózás és gazdálkodás a Közép-Duna-Medencében a merkantilizmus korában (Vajdasági Tudományos és Művészeti Akadémia, Novi Sad - Történelmi Intézet, Beograd, 1982)
Summary
CHAPTER II - THE CANAL — The Design and Designers The creators of the Danube—Tisa canal were the Kiss brothers (József and Gabor). The elder, József, born March 18, 1748, in Buda, belonged to a family of lower aristocratic status acquired in 1681. In 1766, he entered the Military Engineering Academy in Vienna, founded by the renowned military leader Eugene of Savoy. For Gabor it is only known that he was born in 1751 and entered the same academy in 1773. They both visited western Europe and stayed for a while in England, a country of numerous navigable canals, built before and after the industrial revolution. József become an official at the Vienna Court Chamber, but is was transferred to a post in Backa, then a land in southern Hungary, today part of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina in Yugoslavia. In 1788 he was appointed the chamber's head engineer for Backa (Dirigender Hofkammer Ingenieur). Soon after his arrival in Backa, the third wave of German migration to the central Danube basin began. The founding of new and expanding of the old settlements occupied the young engineer for most of his working time. The western and southern borders of the province were bounded by the Danube, and its eastern border by Tisa, separating it from Banat. In addition, southern Backa, alerady populated by German colonists, was marshy land, and József Kiss was given the task of draining the marshes in the area of the Sivac and Kula settlements. He constructed a drainage ditch, and later widened it to a canal. This canal connected the Sivac marsh with the Black Pool (Crna bara) at Vrbas and was about 30 km long. The Black Pool itself stretched from Vrbas to the Tisa. Surveying the waters of Backa, József Kiss arrived at the idea of canalizing the Black Pool, as a natural recipient, and making it navigable as far as Vrbas in central Backa. Between that point and the village Monostor on the Danube a canal could be built. On two ocasions, at his own expense, J.Kiss measured the elevation difference between Monostor and Backo Gradiste (former Foldvara) on the Tisa, found that the Danube lay 23 feet (7.27 m) above the Tisa, and estimated that the future canal would be about 13.25 Austrian miles (100.5 km) long. Having found that the construction of a canal was feasible and knowing what would it mean for the transportation of goods in this province, whose fertile land was mostly owned by the Hungarian Chamber, József Kiss, together with his brother Gabor, applied (12 December, 1791) to the Austrian emperor and Hungarian king Leopold II for authorization to construct a navigable canal between Monostor and Backo GradiSte. This application contained a fundamental innovation, in that they asked that the construction of the canal be entrusted to a private 485
