The Fall and Rebirth of the Kaffeehaus
After World War I, and the fall of the empire, a new literary coffeehouse was a necessity: Art cannot exist without change. In Vienna the torch was passed to the Café Herrenhof, near both the Griensteidl and the Central. In spite of the presence of future Nobel Prize winner Elias Canetti (he won for literature in 1981), movie-star-to-be Peter Lorre, and Franz Werfel (whose book The Song of Bernadette was an enormous international best-seller), its vogue lasted only until the 1938 Anschluss, when Adolf Hitler annexed Austria. It struggled along through the war and fizzled out in the 1950s. The war decimated Vienna’s Jewish population, and tragically, there were simply fewer people to return to the tables. The establishment that now stands in its place is an espresso bar.
Espresso was another reason for the long fallow period of the coffeehouse. In the early 1950s, Italian espresso trickled upward into Austria. Instead of meditating over their Melange (coffee with hot milk), the Viennese started downing their tiny piping-hot demitasses of espresso Italian-style, in a few quick sips. Even though many coffeehouses fought to maintain tradition for drip-brewed coffee, popular taste ran to Vienna Roast coffee pressure-brewed in a steaming espresso machine, a habit that remains.
The Viennese were working hard to rebuild their city, and leisure time was at a premium. In prewar Vienna, there had been scores of newspapers, magazines, and brochures to be written, and writers had worked feverishly at their coffeehouse tables to supply fresh copy. Many a writer’s imagination had been fueled by a cup of coffee and the conversation of friends. Now the job of freelance writer was an endangered species. The atmosphere of the espresso bars reflected the clientele’s new attitude: They were people who didn’t need an attractive interior to drink their coffee. Stools replaced comfortable chairs, pegs on a wall took over for wrought-iron coat racks. Like other generations before them, this one rejected the values of their fathers and sought new places to gather with their friends and solve the problems of the world.
Without the customers to support them, many coffeehouses closed. The spacious, elegant cafés of the Ringstrasse were perfunctorily turned into banks, automobile showrooms, and fast-food outlets. In fact, café owners refer to the 1960s as Kaffehaussterben : the death of the coffeehouse. After the postwar dust finally settled, and the Austrians regained a sense of place in the European community, many leaders believed that coffeehouses could be a great civic tool for restoring Viennese pride. In 1983, the government gave landmark status to four cafés: Landtmann (the favorite of the city leaders, near the Rathaus, and Freud’s café of choice), Goldegg (a working-class café near the Belvedere with a rare furnace imported from America), Sperl (built in the classic L shape), and Prückel (even though little of its original design remains, it housed a famous cabaret).
Perhaps the renovation of the Sperl is a good way to show the loving care that was lavished on these landmarks. Under the direction of architect Joerg Nairz , the old fabric designs were carefully copied and woven. The wooden floor was repaired and refinished, and the marble-topped tables, Thonet chairs, and heavy iron coat racks were refurbished. Discrete air filters were installed to recirculate the chronically tobacco smoke-laden air. Coffeehouses once again became places to see and be seen.
As usual, the fates of coffeehouses in Budapest and Prague mirrored that of the Viennese, and you could glean the former life of many a drab state office building by its crumbling bas-relief decorations and huge, if grimy, windows. Both of these cities had boasted thousands of coffeehouses in their golden years.
In Hungary, an entire revolution had sprung from a coffeehouse in 1848. News of the Viennese uprising had spread from the Café Pilvax throughout Budapest, giving rise to a homegrown insurrection against Hapsburg rule. Such famous Hungarian patriots as Lajos Kossuth; Lajos, Count Batthyány; István, Count Széchenyi; and Ferenc Deák, whose names grace many streets and squares in Budapest, plotted revolution over countless cups of Café Pilvax’s brew. The revolution was brutally squelched by the Haps-burg forces, with help from the Russians, and many of these patriots became martyrs as well. Budapest also sported a Café Central, which, along with the Café New York, was a hothouse of Hungarian literary thought. With the spread of Communism, many coffeehouses closed, or their names were changed to downplay any unpleasant associations (the luxurious Café New York became Café Hungaria).
In Prague, the art-deco Café Slavia managed to stay open for a while even under Communism. It was home to Václav Havel and his associates as they planted the seeds for the Velvet Revolution. With the rise of democracy, many of the old places reopened. Budapest has a Café Central once again, Prague’s Kavárna Obecní dům (Municipal House Café) is one of the most beautiful in all of Europe, and after a long hiatus complicated by a real-estate snafu, the Slavia is back full force.