Mountain and Lionheart

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The Cafe Berg in 2013, the Löwenherz bookstore in the background.

Berg und Löwenherz were a lesbian and gay daytime café and bookshop in Vienna . It was the first café of its kind in Austria with a guest room that was directly visible from the street , which was able to establish itself and the first themed bookstore in the lesbian and gay segment. Café Berg was closed in 2017.

description

The Berggasse cultural association was founded during a two-year preparatory phase and is still active today. The Café Berg and the Löwenherz bookstore were opened at the end of June 1993 as a joint project by Leo Kellermann under the Löwenherz & Berg Buchhandel und Cafebetrieb GmbH in Berggasse , where the Sigmund Freud Museum is also located, in Vienna- Alsergrund , and they are still today both locations connected by a connecting door. It was founded as “a project to promote and expand the lesbian-gay community”.

The dishes in the café correspond to a light, somewhat Italophile cuisine. The clientele consists mainly of a mix of gays, lesbians, bisexuals and straight people . In an internet survey of trendy bars carried out by an editor of the Nachtbote , the bar reached second place in 2007 and was also in the top places in previous years. The university lecturer, political scientist, feminist and editor-in-chief of Lambda-Nachrichten, Gudrun Hauer , held her office hours in the mountain during the semester.

The bookstore's range is not limited to gay and lesbian literature, but also offers Austrian literature , social science , psychology and psychoanalysis , history with a focus on the Holocaust and National Socialism and the main works in the area of transgender . Furthermore, there are own imports mainly from the United States and the United Kingdom, but also from France and Germany, as well as a comprehensive range of relevant magazines from politics and lifestyle to erotic, comics, Shōnen Ai , Yaoi , films, music CDs and accessories .

Readings and exhibitions are mainly organized through the joint Berggasse cultural association. Further initiatives are discussions, guided tours and the like. According to its own statements, the association has set itself the goal of making the enlightenment ideals of the French Revolution - freedom, equality, brotherhood - fruitful for the contemporary culture of LGBT people.

meaning

At the beginning of the 1990s, the lesbian and gay movement in Austria began to differentiate again and various organizations emerged. Many contemporary witnesses see the period between 1993 and 1996 as very formative for the further course of the movement and describe the period as a phase of departure. The opening of Berg und Löwenherz is considered to be the beginning of this phase and in the same year the first Life Ball was held, now the largest AIDS benefit event in Europe. Important gatherings and preparatory meetings of the Austrian Lesbian and Gay Forum , the International Human Rights Tribunal and the Rainbow Parade took place in Café Berg.

In the relevant Viennese pubs scene, mostly established around the Naschmarkt , most pubs still had a bell and admission control. On Linken Wienzeile there was the Willendorf restaurant in the Rosa Lila Villa , which is mostly only open in the evening , but which is a bit above street level and cannot be directly viewed, as well as the mixed Café Savoy , which was only visited in the evening by a large gay audience and where scene magazines were not allowed to be played back then. Berg und Löwenherz are located away from this district near the University of Vienna . The operators of Café Berg did not want to hide gay and lesbian life, they wanted to make it more visible, which is why there are large glass windows that can also be opened in summer. At first there were long discussions about these windows and some were afraid that people would be afraid and that customers would not come. Then the opposite happened and today these are the most popular places and in summer there is also a pub garden .

At the first rainbow parade in 1996, the employees of Berg and Löwenherz contributed to the organizational and conceptual origin and structure and have been taking part every year since then.

Another story

The Löwenherz bookstore began with around 3,500 titles that had been selected by Jürgen Ostler and Andreas Brunner . In 2003 there were over 8,000 titles and in 2007 the range had expanded to over 10,000 titles. At the beginning of 2015, the 13,000 titles were exceeded.

In 2002, the Berg Bar am Spittelberg in Vienna's Neubau was opened as a night branch. In the meantime, however, it has been closed again.

Kellermann ran the café and bookstore until 2002. He established them as an institution and then handed over management of the café to long-term employee Georg Ender. The bookstore was taken over in October 2002 by Jürgen Ostler, who has been with the company since the preparatory phase in 1992, and Veit Georg Schmidt, who has been working since 1994.

Georg Ender opened the studio67 club in early 2007, but sold it again in 2012.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Florentin. in: kekinwien.at, October 11, 2017. Accessed December 14, 2017.
  2. ↑ a b Press text: 10 years of the Löwenherz bookstore - Malediva lights up for the birthday party (PDF; 34 kB), April 27, 2003
  3. ↑ a b c loewenherz.at: 10 years Löwenherz and Berg , 2003, status: 3. November 2007
  4. ↑ Georg-Christian: gay scene - without makeup - ELECTION 2007 ( Memento of 7 February 2005 at the Internet Archive ) July 5, 2007
  5. ↑ Gudrun Hauer: People Search Institute for Political Science - Dr. Gudrun Hauer  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , University of Vienna, as of November 3, 2007@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / online.univie.ac.at  
  6. ↑ Ulrike Repnik: The history of the lesbian and gay movement in Austria , Milena Verlag, Vienna 2006, ISBN 3-85286-136-5 , p. 156ff
  7. ↑ a b Veit . loewenherz.at. Retrieved June 3, 2012.
  8. ↑ Editor: The best city tips - Berg Bar, Best of Vienna 1/2002, Falter Verlag, p. 75 ( Memento from September 26, 2004 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ↑ "tft": page no longer available , searching web archives: A Tyrolean in Vienna , Queer Book, October 3, 2006@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.queerworld.at
  10. ↑ loewenherz.at: Jürgen , as of November 3, 2007

Web links

Coordinates: 48 ° 13 ′ 3.7 ″  N , 16 ° 21 ′ 39.1 ″  E