Born in Bad Bergzabern, Rhenish Palatinate, in modern-day Germany, Culmann's father, a pastor, tutored him at home before enrolling him at the military engineering school at Metz to prepare for entry to the École Polytechnique.

Culmann's ambitions were frustrated by an attack of typhoid and, after a long convalescence, he attended the Karlsruhe Polytechnic School.

He joined the Bavarian civil service in 1841 as an apprentice engineer in the design of railroad bridges.

His tour lasted from 1849 to 1851, studying the comparative designs of truss bridges and developing new analytical techniques to facilitate his investigations.

[1] In 1855, he took up the chair of engineering sciences at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, holding the post until his death.