Anton Ferdinand Benda was from a Jewish Berlin family but later converted to Christianity. He was an engineer for the Magdeburg-Wittenbergschen Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft in the 1840s. In 1855 he took the position of Staatsbaudirektor in Lübeck where he also worked for a railyway company. He was an important railway bridge builder in the first half of the 19th century.
