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| Coffee |
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| Vienna – with heart and soul |
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Image: Café Schopenhauer in the 18th
century, a popular suburban coffee house
© Verlag Christian Brandstätter - Manfred Horvath |
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| It is more than 300 years old and has
been a legend for nearly 100 years: the coffeehouse, a Viennese
institution of the first rank, shrouded in anecdotes and myths. It was
at the very beginning, or so legend has it, that after the siege of
Vienna in 1683, the Turks left behind bags of inconspicuous
grey-green-coloured beans. They were attended to by a certain
Kolschitzky. It is said that, in thanks for his helpful spying services,
he became the first Viennese coffee house proprietor. Thus goes one of
the favourite Viennese rumours. However, it was not the Polish spy
Kolschitzky, but the Armenian merchant called Deodato who acquired the
first coffee licence privilege, in 1685. For a long time the Armenian
merchants remained the city’s leading coffee makers. No rumour is
further from the truth than that this trade quickly enjoyed great
popularity (amongst the male population). |
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Image: Café Sperl, one of the oldest
existing coffee houses in Vienna
© Verlag Christian Brandstätter - Manfred Horvath |
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| The consumption of coffee was
complemented by other pleasures in the 18th century: playing billiards
or chess or reading the newspaper. In the 19th century, the coffee house
became a big central point of social life, luxuriously furnished in the
city, cheaper although not less pompous in the suburbs. Here, the patron
drank ‘his’ coffee, read ‘his’ newspaper, played, reflected or conversed.
Also dining was (and still is) possible in the coffee house. And in the
concert cafés during the Biedermeier, the waltz kings played music. At
the turn of the century was the dawning of coffee house culture at its
height. It is said that the brilliant minds sat tightly packed around
marble tables, in front of them a mocha or an Einspänner (mocha with
whipped cream), above their heads billows of cigar smoke, and always a
notepad and a newspaper within reach, and between it the staccato of
their ingenious witticisms. At home they might only have a cold room, if
anything, because money was short. That is how the legend goes and how
the many anecdotes are recounted; and thus or similar it may well have
been in the Café Griensteidl, Central or Herrenhof. “In the coffee house
the talents are sitting so close round the table, that they are
preventing one another from evolvement”, mocks Karl Kraus, who ought to
know because he sat there, too, just as Schnitzler, Freud or
Hofmannsthal, Loos, Klimt or Schiele, the still unfamiliar operetta
composer Franz Lehár and an even more unknown Mr Bronstein alias Leo
Trotzki. And the man of letters, Peter Altenberg, gave his complete
address simply as ‘Vienna 1, Café Central”. In those days, the coffee
house had ultimately become an institution or for some even a philosophy
of life. And for many this applies to this day, in spite of the
dwindling numbers of coffee houses. After all, there are still about 500
coffee houses in Vienna and for all of them, a saying by Alfred Polgar
about Café Central still rings true, “Participating in the intrinsic
charms of this fantastical coffee house can only be someone who does not
want anything there but to be there. Uselessness justifies the sojourn.” |
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| Text source in extracts: |
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| Käthe Springer; Wien City Guide |
Top Tips
Top Secrets
Top Infos
Photographien von Manfred Horvath
Verlag Christian Brandstätter - Wien |
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| Christian Brandstätter Verlagsgesellschaft m.b.H. |
| The publishing service for museums,
corporations and public authorities |
| www.brandstaetter-verlag.at |
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ATU 50515900 |
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