FISCHER, ERLACH JOHANN BERNHARD von. — Architect, born in Graz in 1656, died in Vienna on 5 April 1723. He was the foremost of the Austrian architects of the Baroque period. Having come to Italy as a young man, he was, in Rome, most probably a pupil of Carlo Fontana, but he also studied with particular attention the works of Bernini and, above all, those of Borromini. In 1687 he was in Vienna in the service of Emperor Joseph I; he then established his qualities as an architect by building Frain Castle in Moravia, Engelhartstellen Castle, and subsequently the imperial mausoleum in Graz.
In 1693 he began working in Salzburg for Count Thun, archbishop of the diocese, in whose service he remained until the death of that prelate in 1709, constructing, among other works, the four Salzburg churches of the Holy Trinity, the Hospital of St. John, the Ursulines, and the Collegiate Church, which is among his major works. Meanwhile and thereafter, in Vienna, he worked on the construction of other buildings, some also of a civil character, such as the celebrated Schönbrunn Palace, completed after his death by the architect N. Pacassi; the Strattmann-Windischgrätz Palace; that of Prince Eugene, later the Ministry of Finance; the Schönborn Palace; and others. In Vienna, however, his most characteristic architectural work, and the one that best reveals the Italian elements of his culture, is the church of S. Carlo Borromeo, completed after the death of its designer by his son Joseph Imanuel F. V. E. (born in Vienna on 19 September 1693, died there on 29 June 1742), himself an architect of great talent, who was also entrusted—among other things—with completing the National Library building, which his father had begun in 1722.