[1] son of Johann Nicolaus Resch, ironmaster, and his wife Julia Bernhardine Louise Wilhelmine, née Heitmann, both of Saxony.
Resch was born in Hörde in Westphalia, Kingdom of Prussia and migrated to Australia in 1863 at age 16, reportedly to evade compulsory military service.
He was a miner in Victoria and a succession of rural towns in New South Wales in the early 1870s before building and operating a hotel in Charters Towers in Queensland for four years.
He was hospitalised while at Holsworthy due to poor health, and was shifted to home internment at his Darling Point residence in March 1918, remaining there until the end of the war.
[1][5][6][2][7] It was reported during his internment that he had been ill for "eight or ten years" and was "living in retirement" and that his sons, Edmund and Arnold Resch, had been conducting the business.