Maribor stories: Deported Tesla

Someone once wrote that Nikola Tesla was a man who “invented the 20th century”. He also spent a short time living in Maribor.

In 1875, Nikola Tesla started studying at the Polytechnic School in Graz in Austria. He sailed through his first year, but in the second year Nikola lost his zeal for studying. Instead, he spent time playing cards and billiards. In his third year he did not pass a single exam. To make things worse, he lost his military scholarship and as he was not able to pay for his schooling, the Polytechnics deleted him from the list of students. At the end of 1878, he came to Maribor and found a job of a technical draftsman in the Druško foundry shop. He spent his spare time in the Pri veselem kmetu (At the Merry Farmer) inn on the corner of Mlinska and Partizanska Road playing cards and billiards.

The only official written document proving that the great innovator actually resided in our town is the Maribor Administration Records (Geschäfts Protokoll) from 1879, which contains the police indictments logs. On 8 March 1879, Nicholaus Tesla was arrested, supposedly at his residence at Teggethoff Street, and brought forward by the gendarmerie. Since he did not posses a residence permit, the town authorities decided »that the aforementioned Nikolaus Tesla, with no disposable financial means on his person to support himself, be deported from Marburg (German name for Maribor) to Gospić, where he should seek workˮ.