It's a celebration!
Peter Mandl's 80th birthday
Peter’s story
Early years
Peter was born on 7 February 1937 in Ried im Innkreis as the second of three brothers. His father was then a general practitioner in Gurten near Braunau, his mother had been a nurse and assisted in the doctor's office. After the Anschluss, they soon had to leave the Innviertel region, as in the homeland of the Führer only convinced party members were tolerated as notables.
As a form of punishment, Peter's father was soon mobilised as a simple soldier and transferred to Poland after a basic military training. Good friends with higher military rank from school times in Hietzing arranged for him to become a staff physician and to look after German officers (and their girlfriends).
The bombardment of Vienna caused Peter's mother to move to Burgenland with the three children in the penultimate year of the war. In Vienna, Peter's mother did not find the two elders who were allowed to travel on military vehicles. The family only got reunited on the other side of the Danube and then moved on to find shelter with relatives in Upper Austria.
On his father's return from the war, Peter suffered a severe manifestation of the Oedipus complex and became so unbearable that his parents sent him for a year to Ried in a Jesuit boarding school. After completion of his secondary education, Peter studied architecture at the Technical University of Vienna. While studying, he took part in archaeological excavations in Ephesus.
Marriage and life in Brussels
Peter was married to Suzanne Pollak. They met already in Vienna as high school students and got married on 1 April 1965 (yes, on April Fool's Day!) in Vienna's oldest church. Susi was already living in Brussels and worked as an interpreter for the European Commission. Peter soon found an opportunity to work there as an architect. Peter's first large project was an indoor swimming pool and sports complex in Genk, Flanders.
Susi and Peter got three sons: Stephan (1966), Alexander (1969) and Christian (1974).
In 1972 Susi and Peter travelled to Mexico to look for work opportunities and live in the capital. However, for a variety of reasons, they ultimately decided to refrain from it (read Carlos Fuentes' "The Years with Laura Diaz").
Peter hoped to get old together with Susi and raise many grandchildren. Susi died in 1993 following surgery.
Grandfather
Peter's sons married (as it should be) in the order of their age in Vienna, Philadelphia and Bratislava. Peter was lucky enough to be able to work well beyond retirement age.
Peter lived for seven years together with Jacqueline Dresse, who worked as a psychoanalyst in Brussels. Together they made many trips, the most impressive was an exploration of Guatemala. When Jacqueline became a grandmother, and Peter had no grandchildren yet, the relationship was severely burdened.
Peter regularly travels from Brussels to Barcelona, Bratislava and Paris to visit his six grandchildren: Arthur (2002), Albert (2004), Laura (2005), Isabelle (2007), Elena (2007) and Oskar (2011).
Architect & Engineer
As an architect and engineer, Peter has been involved in a variety of projects in various countries: sports facilities, office buildings, including for the European Union, hospitals, university and laboratory buildings, airports, TV studios, industrial buildings, historic buildings and a mosque in Kuwait.
