|
|
|
|
|
|
Resources |
|
|
|
The Coffeehouses of Vienna
| Article
# : |
13243 |
|
|
Section : |
CULTURE
|
| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1987 |
4,970 Words |
| Author
: |
Agnes Huszar Vardy
Agnes Huszar Vardy, associate professor of comparative
literature at Robert Morris College, also teaches Hungarian
language and culture at the University of Pittsburgh. She
lived and studied in Vienna, making visits to Viennese cafes
part of her honeymoon and study breaks. |
To become a coffeehouse addict, one need merely enter one's first. The addiction may last for the rest of one's life. Students, weary of serious study at the seminars and Vorlesungen (speeches), represent the earliest addicts, or habitués. Renowned Viennese critic, moralist, essayist, and playwright Karl Kraus, himself an habitué of Café Greinsteidl and the Café Central, distinguishes between the habitué and the passant: The former drops into a coffeehouse several times a day, and the latter goes at most only once. With the exception of an increasing number of tourists, most people in Vienna belong to the first category.
A Viennese coffeehouse is by no means just a place to get a cup of coffee. Alfred Polgar, wit, critic, and short-story writer of a bygone age, describes the Kaffeehaus as a state of mind, a weltanschauung, a way of looking at the world. Recently this unique Viennese institution has become the subject of serious research. Recognized as a significant aspect of the social cultural, and intellectual life of the city, the Wiener Kaffeehaus was honored in 1959 with an exhibit in the Stadthalle of the Vienna city hall. In 1974, manuscripts and publications of Viennese coffeehouse literati were displayed in Marburg, Germany, as part of the German literary exhibit. And in 1980, Vienna's Historisches Museum organized a four-month long exhibit on its coffeehouses. The exhibit featured hundreds of documents, lithographs, paintings, photographs, and artifacts tracing the history of the city's coffeehouses from their beginning through the interwar years. The exhibit's elaborate and well-illustrated catalog is itself a storehouse of information.
Coffeehouse literature has been rich and varied ever since the middle of the
... (1994 of 30649 Characters)
Read Full Article
|
|
