Karl Magnus Vitberg (26 January 1787 — 24 January 1855) was a Russian Neoclassical architect of Swedish stock.

Biography

Vitberg was born in

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

. As a young man he was a member of Alexander Labzin's

Masonic lodge A Masonic lodge (also called Freemasons' lodge, or private lodge or constituent lodge) is the basic organisational unit of Freemasonry. It is also a commonly used term for a building where Freemasons meet and hold their meetings. Every new l ...

, the "Dying Sphinx", and studied Boehmist theosophy. The lodge, which had been the first to reopen, in 1800, was ordered closed in 1822. Vitberg won a design competition and in 1817 had the satisfaction of witnessing the groundbreaking ceremony for his neoclassical

Cathedral of Christ the Saviour The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour (, ) is a Russian Orthodox Church, Russian Orthodox cathedral in Moscow, Russia, on the northern bank of the Moskva River, a few hundred metres southwest of the Kremlin. With an overall height of , it is the ...

, a monument to the resistance to the

French invasion of Russia The French invasion of Russia, also known as the Russian campaign (), the Second Polish War, and in Russia as the Patriotic War of 1812 (), was initiated by Napoleon with the aim of compelling the Russian Empire to comply with the Continenta ...

in 1812. In order to undertake this project, Vitberg had converted to the

Russian Orthodox Church The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC; ;), also officially known as the Moscow Patriarchate (), is an autocephaly, autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Church, Eastern Orthodox Christian church. It has 194 dioceses inside Russia. The Primate (bishop), p ...

, as stipulated by Tsar Alexander I. After his conversion, Vitberg changed his name from Karl Magnus to Aleksandr Lavrentyevich (), after the monarch. Though construction of Vitberg's cathedral on the

Sparrow Hills Sparrow Hills (, ), formerly known as Lenin Hills (, ), is a hill on the right bank of the Moskva River and one of the highest points in Moscow, reaching a height of above the river level. The observation platform is on a steep bank above ...

was begun in 1826, a new emperor, Nicholas I abandoned the "Masonic" plan for a less "Roman Catholic" neo-Byzantine construction. The architect was accused of bribery and exiled to Vyatka, an isolated city halfway between Moscow and the

Ural Mountains The Ural Mountains ( ),; , ; , or simply the Urals, are a mountain range in Eurasia that runs north–south mostly through Russia, from the coast of the Arctic Ocean to the river Ural (river), Ural and northwestern Kazakhstan.

. There his most successful work was accomplished, among which were his monumental gates for the Alexander Garden (1836) and the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral (1839–1848). A fellow-exile there was

Alexander Herzen Alexander Ivanovich Herzen (; ) was a Russian writer and thinker known as the precursor of Russian socialism and one of the main precursors of agrarian populism (being an ideological ancestor of the Narodniki, Socialist-Revolutionaries, Trudo ...

, who made friends with Vitberg, portrayed him sympathetically in ''My Past and Thoughts'', and was briefly influenced by Vitberg's strain of mystical thought.Mark Pittaway, ''The Fluid Borders of Europe'', 2003:230. Vitberg Cathedral

Vitberg was eventually allowed to return to Moscow, but found little work, and died in poverty and official neglect. The Russian neoclassical revival in the late 19th century contributed to a reappraisal of his architectural legacy. An exhibition, ''Alexander Witberg (1787–1855). En Arkitekurhistorisk Installation'' was mounted in Stockholm from 1993 to 1994.

References

External links

*
''The Memoirs of Academician Vitberg'' (Moscow, 1872)

Vitberg's Fateful Design, Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Savior, 36-58
{{DEFAULTSORT:Vitberg, Aleksandr 1787 births 1855 deaths Architects from Saint Petersburg Russian people of Swedish descent Russian neoclassical architects Imperial Academy of Arts alumni Awarded with a large gold medal of the Academy of Arts