American architecture at a long wooden desk every night until the
library closed.
Bernhard’s work as a brick exporter brought him into contact with buffs and preservationists, who often waited at the sites
Bernhard was sent to, imploring his firm not to demolish the buildings it had cheaply bought. It saddened Bernhard to destroy
an early movie house or a grand and decrepit hotel, but he saw his work as necessary violence. “I was a clearer of rubble,
a germanedestroyer of old forms,” he writes, with characteristic wry hyperbole. He soon encountered architects as well. Horst von Hartsig,
the well-known beaux arts architect and winner of the Prix de Rome, took special notice of the ambitious young man. He hired
Bernhard as an assistant in 1942. “A useless person, who tacked a ‘von’ onto his name to impress naive Midwesterners,” writes
his former protégé. “Von Hartsig’s false nobility did not enhance the quality of his buildings.”
This may be a retrospective justification on Bernhard’s part. Soon after accepting the job, Bernhard seduced von Hartsig’s
wife, Ulli, who remained Bernhard’s great love until the end of his life. He even built an Ulli Room in the Traumhaus to memorialize
her “gentle but genuine madness.” Still in the “daze of Ulli,” the young architect took the lead in several von Hartsig projects,
including the restoration of the Opera House. While Bernhard found these projects disgustingly conventional, he gained practical
experience, and fought his first battles with the infamous Trude zoning board. Von Hartsig continued to promote his assistant’s
career, which led to several commissions, mostly houses, in the late 1940s.
The great split between von Hartsig and Bernhard occurred in 1951. The two men stopped speaking for reasons that can be easily
inferred. Bernhard left von Hartsig to start his own firm, and the two volleyed invective through the editorial pages of architectural
journals for the next decade. To Bernhard’s dismay, Ulli chose to stay with von Hartsig even after the revelation of her affair.
After von Hartsig’s death in 1964, she never remarried, dying herself soon after in 1968. Oddly, von Hartsig’s will designated
Bernhard as the architect of his tomb—either a final gesture of forgiveness or vanity winning out. Perhaps von Hartsigwanted more than anything to survive, if only as a footnote in his entomber’s biography. After Ulli’s death, her coffin was
lowered into the adjoining plot.
Bernhard’s grief, no doubt, contributed to the magisterial melancholy of his later work. The Ringstrasse Mall, “misunderstood
by millions of corn eaters,” was his great statement on the impossibility of fulfillment within a capitalist culture. It was
very nearly never built. Fourteen years in the making, construction was delayed every step of the way, with Bernhard fighting
heroically—others would say megalomaniacally—for the total realization of his vision. The mall was his
gesamtkunstwerk
, complete with outdoor leisure park, an amphitheater for classical music, latticed follies where serious young people could
write novels, and a monorail line that would feed mallgoers to the downtown area and vice versa. Some of these features were
sacrificed during the construction process, causing Bernhard to disown the project almost immediately after its completion.
He reminded his partners that he (Bernhard) was the only one who knew the solution to the mall’s central labyrinth, and would
only reveal this secret when his specifications were met. They never were.
The Traumhaus was the consummation of Bernhard’s late style. Funded by the wealthy heiress of a vacuum cleaner fortune, who
gave Bernhard a blank check in exchange for a room in the finished asylum, Bernhard began work on his most personal project
in 1977. He had been suffering from severe health problems for the past few years and realized he did not
library closed.
Bernhard’s work as a brick exporter brought him into contact with buffs and preservationists, who often waited at the sites
Bernhard was sent to, imploring his firm not to demolish the buildings it had cheaply bought. It saddened Bernhard to destroy
an early movie house or a grand and decrepit hotel, but he saw his work as necessary violence. “I was a clearer of rubble,
a germanedestroyer of old forms,” he writes, with characteristic wry hyperbole. He soon encountered architects as well. Horst von Hartsig,
the well-known beaux arts architect and winner of the Prix de Rome, took special notice of the ambitious young man. He hired
Bernhard as an assistant in 1942. “A useless person, who tacked a ‘von’ onto his name to impress naive Midwesterners,” writes
his former protégé. “Von Hartsig’s false nobility did not enhance the quality of his buildings.”
This may be a retrospective justification on Bernhard’s part. Soon after accepting the job, Bernhard seduced von Hartsig’s
wife, Ulli, who remained Bernhard’s great love until the end of his life. He even built an Ulli Room in the Traumhaus to memorialize
her “gentle but genuine madness.” Still in the “daze of Ulli,” the young architect took the lead in several von Hartsig projects,
including the restoration of the Opera House. While Bernhard found these projects disgustingly conventional, he gained practical
experience, and fought his first battles with the infamous Trude zoning board. Von Hartsig continued to promote his assistant’s
career, which led to several commissions, mostly houses, in the late 1940s.
The great split between von Hartsig and Bernhard occurred in 1951. The two men stopped speaking for reasons that can be easily
inferred. Bernhard left von Hartsig to start his own firm, and the two volleyed invective through the editorial pages of architectural
journals for the next decade. To Bernhard’s dismay, Ulli chose to stay with von Hartsig even after the revelation of her affair.
After von Hartsig’s death in 1964, she never remarried, dying herself soon after in 1968. Oddly, von Hartsig’s will designated
Bernhard as the architect of his tomb—either a final gesture of forgiveness or vanity winning out. Perhaps von Hartsigwanted more than anything to survive, if only as a footnote in his entomber’s biography. After Ulli’s death, her coffin was
lowered into the adjoining plot.
Bernhard’s grief, no doubt, contributed to the magisterial melancholy of his later work. The Ringstrasse Mall, “misunderstood
by millions of corn eaters,” was his great statement on the impossibility of fulfillment within a capitalist culture. It was
very nearly never built. Fourteen years in the making, construction was delayed every step of the way, with Bernhard fighting
heroically—others would say megalomaniacally—for the total realization of his vision. The mall was his
gesamtkunstwerk
, complete with outdoor leisure park, an amphitheater for classical music, latticed follies where serious young people could
write novels, and a monorail line that would feed mallgoers to the downtown area and vice versa. Some of these features were
sacrificed during the construction process, causing Bernhard to disown the project almost immediately after its completion.
He reminded his partners that he (Bernhard) was the only one who knew the solution to the mall’s central labyrinth, and would
only reveal this secret when his specifications were met. They never were.
The Traumhaus was the consummation of Bernhard’s late style. Funded by the wealthy heiress of a vacuum cleaner fortune, who
gave Bernhard a blank check in exchange for a room in the finished asylum, Bernhard began work on his most personal project
in 1977. He had been suffering from severe health problems for the past few years and realized he did not
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