| John Jager | |
| Birth Date: | May 16, 1871 |
| Birth Place: | Bistra, Austria-Hungary |
| Death Place: | Minneapolis, Minnesota |
| Nationality: | Slovene |
| Occupation: | Architect |
John Jager (Slovenized: Ivan Jager; May 16, 1871 – October 31, 1959) was a Slovene–American architect and urban planner.[1]
John Jager was born in Bistra, Austria-Hungary (now Slovenia) at Railway Guard House 365A above the village, where his father worked as a railway guard.[2] [3] He was baptized Johann Jager.[2]
He graduated from high school in Ljubljana in 1892, after which he studied architecture at the Vienna University of Technology under Joseph Maria Olbrich and Otto Wagner.[1] In 1898, he toured Lower Carniola, Pivka, the Vipava region, and the Karst Plateau, where he collected folk motifs to decorate the National Café (Slovenian: Narodna kavarna) in Ljubljana.[1] [4] In Vienna, he worked as an assistant to Max Fabiani.[1] He graduated from the University of Vienna in 1900.[5] In 1901, he went to Beijing at the invitation of the Austrian government to build shelters for its soldiers during the Boxer Rebellion.[5] He emigrated to the United States in 1902.[1] [5] In 1918, Jager traveled to Serbia, where he worked as an inspector for a Red Cross unit in charge of rebuilding 60 villages damaged during the First World War; for this work he was made a Red Cross captain, and in 1940 he was awarded the Order of the Yugoslav Crown.[5] Jager lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he died in 1959.[5] [6]