Josef Rosenberg was born into the family of a local builder in Jilemnice, where he had the right of residence until 1874. After completing his studies at the Real Grammar Schools in Hradec Králové and Liberec, he joined the metallurgical and mechanical engineering plant in Frankfurt an der Oder, Germany. After that, he moved to building offices in Vienna, Prague and Hradec Králové. After returning to Prague, he accepted the job in Novák & Jahn factory where he started with the construction of the brewery in Náchod. In 1873, he passed the builder’s exam at the Vicegerency. On 19 May 1874, he applied for a concession in Jihlava, where he then ran his own office. At the same time, he designed the façade of the Girls' Medical School (Dívčí zdravotní škola) on Husova Street, built in 1875. Josef Rosenberg married Anna (born 1856, née Wybíral) in church on 15 September 1874 in Rančířov near Jihlava. On 15. 7. 1876, their son Viktor was born, who was christened in the Church of St. Jacob (Kostel sv. Jakuba).
In Jihlava, he ran an office named Technical Office for Breweries and Malt Houses J. Rosenberg, Brewery Engineer and Town Builder in Jihlava (Technická kancelář pro pivovary a sladovny J. Rosenberg, pivovarský inženýr a městský stavitel v Jihlavě). However, after having moved to Prague in 1888, he changed the name to Technical Office for the Brewing Industry, Builder J. Rosenberg Prague – Královské Vinohrady (Technická kancelář pro pivovarství, stavitel J. Rosenberg Praha – Královské Vinohrady).
Despite fierce local competition, he made a name for himself as a designer and builder of breweries. He implemented 106 of them, not only in Bohemia and Moravia, but also in Upper and Lower Austria, Styria, Carinthia, Tyrol, Galicia (Eastern Europe), the Kingdom of Hungary, Slavonia, Bosnia, Serbia, Italy, Germany and Anatolia. He designed and built mainly buildings for cold facilities in breweries – fermentation rooms, cellars, and, above all, above-ground “American-style“ cold stores, the construction of which, including the insulation layer, he had patented. It is a unique system of above-ground cellars. The one in the middle, full of ice, cooled the rooms with beer kegs on the sides. Rosenberg also designed malt houses, two-floor or three-floor malt kilns in the English style, equipment for delivering kegs into cellars, ventilation systems for malting floors and cellars, or malting floors with broken passes protecting from mould.
For the Manor Brewery in Pacov in 1872, he designed and built a two-floor malt kiln by the malt house, a new fermentation room, two cold stores of his own design and an extension of the cellars. In the Jihlava brewery, he designed an arched underground cold store with technology for 48 open vessels where beer fermented in a cool environment. The design of the fermentation room (“spilka”) was signed in his own hand in April 1879. In 1896, he added new lagering cellars. After the abolishment of the propination laws, the brewery in Jaroměřice underwent a major reconstruction. In 1881, a new two-floor malt kiln was built according to Rosenberg’s designs, increasing the brewhouse capacity to 36 hectolitres – the brewery thus produced approximately 3,000 hectolitres of beer a year. From 1907, the buildings on the site were used by a distillery, which operated there also after nationalisation until the 60s, when the buildings were gradually renovated – the malt house with Rosenberg’s malt kiln was in a poor condition and was redeveloped after 1986.
In the Manor Brewery, Rosenberg’s design and subsequent construction of new cold facilities of the brewery on the slope behind the Balinka River were an important milestone. The total annual production capacity of the original brewery was nearly 10,000 hectolitres, and the new building in 1883 added a capacity of 6,000 hectolitres. A model of Rosenberg’s cold facilities in the brewery in Velké Meziříčí has been preserved in the National Technical Museum in Prague, but the actual cold facilities were demolished. For the Lobeč brewery, he designed a remodelling into steam engine operation (1894–1897). He also designed the same type of operation for the Plasy Princely Brewery, where he added a brewhouse and cold facilities (1898–1899). In 1893, he extended the noble brewery in Humpolec, today’s Bernard Brewery, with new cold stores, cellars and fermentation rooms of his own patented design. In Havlíčkův Brod, he designed (1897) a two-floor malt kiln and by June 1900, he also added a new cold store of his own design, fermentation rooms and an extension of the lagering cellars. For the brewery in Hořice in the Podkrkonoší region, he designed cellars, cold stores and fermentation rooms.
Rosenberg’s most extensive work is the new building of the brewery and malt house of František Ferdinand d´Este in Benešov, which is still in operation today. Its annual production was 100,000 hectolitres (1915). The archduke had the plans drawn up in July 1887, i.e. at the time when Rosenberg worked in Jihlava. After that, Rosenberg exhibited them at the Provincial Jubilee Exhibition in Prague in 1891, where he was introduced to the archduke František Ferdinand d'Este in person. Rosenberg designed a total of 26 breweries with steam propulsion, and one with an electric drive. Rosenberg’s design activities went beyond the brewing industry. In September 1885, he designed a remodelling of the steam mill on U Dlouhé stěny Street in Jihlava, adding a new chimney. In February 1887, on Mostecká Street, he designed the completion of Miloslav Pešek’s starch factory, adding a new chimney and technology for syrup production. Around 1890, he designed a new refinery building for the glass cutting plant Viktoria in Smrčná near Jihlava. In 1896, he designed the now defunct starch factory with glucose and grape sugar production for Dagobert Löwenthal (5. 7. 1856 – 24. 8. 1938) in Lesnov in Jihlava where the company Ed. Ast & Co. built one of the first multi-storey reinforced concrete structures in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1901. The remaining parts on the premises, later used as a foundry, were destroyed after 2019. His other works include the cloth factories in Třešť, Hodice (carbonisation building, 1879) and Batelov (Tomáš Novotný & spol.), steam glassworks and glass refinery in Janštejn, Duchcov and Hybrálec, and steam and water mills in Hybrálec and Kostelec. Rosenberg also built the steam engine match factory and drying facility in Bucharest, as mentioned in the obituary in the National Newspaper (Národní listy).
He wrote numerous specialist articles for Reports of the Architects and Engineers Association in the Kingdom of Bohemia (Zprávy spolku architektů a inženýrů v království Českém), he published in Ferment (Kvas), Brewing Newspaper (Pivovarnické listy) in Prague, Wochenschrift des Österreichischen Ingenieur- und Architekten-Vereines in Viennna, Zeitschrift für Zündwarenfabrikation in Dresden, Brautechnische Rundschau in Moravská Ostrava as well as in other periodicals. From 1901, he was the editor of the Czech Builders Calendar (Kalendář českých stavitelů) and wrote a book about brewing, with detailed plans of various types of breweries and machinery. He was also interested in motoring – in 1900, he became one of the first owners of a passenger car in Bohemia and was involved in the establishment of the Czech Automobile Club, where he was the first chairman.
Josef Rosenberg died of a stroke suddenly in 1915, during a rehabilitation stay in the spa town of Poděbrady, at the age of 65. The business was then taken over successfully by his son Viktor Rosenberg (1879–1932), who had obtained a degree in technical sciences in 1911, with his PhD thesis titled Construction and Mechanical Plans with Calculations and Budgets for Relocating and Rebuilding the Family Brewery in Jeneč (Stavební a strojní plány s výpočty a rozpočty na přeložení a znovuzřízení pivovaru c. a k. rodinných statků v Jenči).
It should be noted that the chief building councillor Antonín Rosenberg (1833–1907) and Oldřich Rosenberg (1863–1924) from the construction company Hrůza a Rosenberg were not blood-related to the brewery designer Josef Rosenberg (1849–1915).
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