FISCHER, ERLAICH JOHANN BERNHARD von. — Architect, b. at Graz in 1636, d. at Vienna on 5 April 1723. He is the greatest of the Austrian architects of the Baroque period. Coming young to Italy, he was in Rome, presumably, a pupil of Carlo Fontana, but he also studied with particular attention the works of Bertini and especially those of Borromini. In 1687 he was at Vienna in the service of Emperor Joseph I, and there he demonstrated his qualities as an architect by building the Castle of Frain in Moravia, that of Engelhardtstein, and then the imperial mausoleum at Graz.
In 1693 he began working at Salzburg for the Count of Thun, Archbishop of the diocese, in whose service he remained until the death of that prelate, which occurred in 1709, constructing among other things the four churches of Salzburg: the Holy Trinity, the Hospital of St. John, the Ursulines, and the Collegiate Church, which is among his major works. Meanwhile, later, in Vienna, he worked on the construction of other buildings, some of them even of a civil character, such as the famous Castle of Schönbrunn, completed after his death by the architect N. Pacassi, the Strattmann-Windischgrätz Palace, that of Prince Eugene (later the Ministry of Finance), that of the Schönborns, etc. However, in Vienna his most characteristic architecture, and that which best reveals the Italian elements of his culture, is the church of St. Charles Borromeo, completed after the death of its creator by his son Joseph Immanuel F. V. E. (b. at Vienna on 19 Sept. 1693, d. there on 29 June 1742), also an architect of great merit to whom was entrusted, among other things, the completion of the National Library building, which had already been begun by his father in 1722.