Bernard Vonnegut (1855-1908)

Bernard was born in Indianapolis, the second of four sons of Clemens and Katharina Vonnegut. Clemens immigrated from Germany in 1851, married Katharina Blank, and established the Vonnegut Hardware Company in 1852. According to the family legend, a young Bernard was working in his father’s hardware store with his brothers when he began to weep. When asked the reason for his tears, he replied that he didn’t want to spend his life working in a store, he wanted to be an artist instead. Upon learning how difficult it was to make a living as an artist, he became an architect instead. Vonnegut studied architecture and graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Polytechnic Institute of Hanover, Germany.

Bernard returned to Indianapolis in 1883 to work as an architect, married Nanette Schnull, and had two sons and a daughter. In 1884, he met architech Arthur Bohn while both were teaching descriptive geometry. In 1888, he joined with Bohn to form the architectural firm Vonnegut and Bohn. This partnership lasted until his death 20 years later, and was then carried on by his son, Kurt Vonnegut (the author’s father), and Bohn into the 1940s. The firm then went through several partnership and name changes before being merged into other companies and losing its identity.