Fistful of Euros, Sweden
Nov 10 2006

323 Years of Caffeine
by Alex Harrowell

One of Thomas Barnett’s commenters complained about Europe being a
cafe society, so why not some café-blogging? After all, the collectif
antilibérale over at European Tribune had a whole thread on
brasseries not so long ago. Der Standard has a long article on the
history of Viennese kaffeehäuser, going back to 1683 and the second
siege of Vienna.

First of all, a classic trope of European history-the fact everyone
knows, but that turns out to be rubbish. Like King Canute telling the
tide to back off (a little like keeping spam out of our comments
threads, but I digress) – everyone remembers that, but hardly anyone
realises that Canute did it to humble his courtiers with the limits
of power, rather than in a gesture of deluded arrogance. Every
schoolboy knows that one Georg Franz Kolschitzky was rewarded for
sneaking through the Turkish lines with a message by being given a
stash of coffee beans from captured stocks. Another version is that,
after the relief of Vienna, he looted the beans from the Turks’
abandoned baggage train, or bought them for a song from a soldier who
didn’t know their value.

The only problem is that it’s not true.

In fact, the first café in Vienna was opened by an Armenian who was a
former servant at the Imperial Court, and who may also have been a
spy. (What else? Cafés are for conspiring.) There are obvious
parallels between the two stories, and it’s hard not to imagine that
Kolschitzky was a more patriotic and Catholic figure for little
Austro-Hungarian boys’ consumption. Brief consideration also debunks
the story that no-one knew what the brown beans were – Venice had
opened the first European café in 1647, and this key strategic
technology spread rapidly along the sea trade routes, so that cafés
were opening in numbers in London in the 1650s.

Gambling and billiards were common from the word go. 40 years on,
newspapers began to appear, and another 20 years saw the first café
with music. Booze and hot food had to wait until 1808, when Austria
joined Napoleon’s trade embargo on the UK and immediately lost access
to coffee. But it was 1856 before women were admitted. From then on,
the sky was the limit-or rather, it was until the eruption of the
short twentieth century.

Vienna’s Ringstrasse is today surprisingly short on cafés; there are
essentially three worth speaking of, the Schottenring at the top end,
the Schwarzenberg at the Schwarzenbergplatz halfway down, and the
Prückel at the Stubentor near the bottom. The reason is grim. Most of
the luxury car showrooms and airline offices are former Jewish cafés,
expropriated before the extermination of their clientele, and
converted to their new use postwar because of their fine locations
and ample clear space on the ground floor. A curious architectural
echo of this exists in London, where a recently opened restaurant
that claims to be an attempt at a classic café-restaurant occupies,
yes, a former car showroom.

My favourites were the Stadlmann, next to the Institute of Political
Science on the Währingerstrasse, and the Alt Wien in the city centre
on Bäckerstrasse. And the Hawelka, but everyone loves the Hawelka.

Any favourites?

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From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress