Jakob Ernst von Liechtenstein-Kastelkorn, the later Bishop of Olomouc, established a Piarist college on his inherited Bílá Voda estates in 1723, a response to the 1707 Convention of Altranstädt granting religious freedom to the Silesian Protestants.
The first was a Bohemian priest, Adalbert Czech, who persuaded Loschmidt's parents to send young Josef to high school in the Piarist monastery in Schlackenwerth and, in 1837, to advanced high-school classes in Prague.
In 1785, after the First Partition of Poland Austrian authorities removed the school from Piarist control and changed the name to Rzeszów's Ober-Gymnasium.
Born at Brienza, in the province of Potenza, from Nicola and Antonia Contardi, he received his first education in a Piarist school in Naples, studying Italian literature, Greek and Latin.