Major Wilfred Clement von Berg

Was born in Croydon, Surrey, England and was articled to Withers & Meredith. He studied at the Architectural Association in London from 1912 under Robert Atkinson. During the First World War he served as a captain in the London Rifle Brigade, winning the Military Cross. After the War, in 1919, he was appointed an Assistant Architect to the Imperial War Graves Commission and designed more than thirty-nine war cemeteries, among them Bedford House at Ypres, Etretat, Sains-les-Marquion and Ypres Town, Reginald Blomfield being the supervising architect. Von Berg left the War Graves Commission in November 1919 but remained in France, practising at St Raphael where he he designed several villas. He worked for the architect H Goodhart-Rendel on his French estate and designed the Golf Club House at Valescure, a bank for Barque King and the Chateau Gloria at Cap Ferrat, all in the South of France. In 1931 Von Berg came to South Africa, settling in the booming East Rand area of the Transvaal. He was first employed by Gordon LEITH for six months, he may have met Leith while working for the War Graves Commission, and set up independent practice about 1932. One of his first jobs was Perry's Department Store in Benoni which was praised by Cumming-George (1934:65) as an 'outstanding example of modern architecture'. He designed a number of houses, hotels and flats in the pre-war boom. He joined the South African Engineers on the outbreak of the Second World War, in charge of their camouflage unit in the Western Desert and in Italy. He returned to South Africa after the war and resumed practice in the Transvaal. Before 1969 he was joined by FS HALFORD who was based in Durban (cf VON BERG & HALFORD). He retired in 1975 and resigned from the ISAA in 1977.