Hansen, Theophile

(1813–1891)

   Born in Copenhagen, Hansen did his first professional work as an architect in Athens, where he absorbed at first hand the lines and ornamentation of classical antiquity and Byzantium. He went to Vienna in 1846, where he worked closely with Ludwig Förster (1797–1863). He also became Förster’s son-in-law.

   Hansen passed on his deep respect for historical styles of architecture to his students at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, where he taught after 1868. His mature work often located buildings in a particular culture. The elegantly classical parliament (1874–1883) on Vienna’s Ringstrasse recalls the Athenian origins of Western democracy and represents his work at its finest and most disciplined. Other buildings were somewhat more eclectic; a new stock exchange that he began in 1874 was typical. Hansen also designed several imposing residential structures along the Ring and in the immediate neighborhood that are good examples of 19th-century neo-Renaissance design and construction in Vienna and elsewhere in the Habsburg Empire.