Coffeehouse literature

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As coffeehouse literature literary works are called, which completely or at least partially in a cafe were written. The authors were called coffeehouse literators. The center of this form of literature was Vienna , but coffee house literature also emerged in other European cities.

The era of coffee house literature

Peter Altenberg in 1907 in Café Central

The Viennese coffee house as a cultural institution, there were of course earlier and it still exists today, its special function as a literary workshop but found out at the time of the fin de siècle , as before the First World War, the disintegration of Austria-Hungary already apparent. In a milieu of pomp and decadence , the Austrian capital experienced a heyday of artistic creation, the so-called Viennese Modernism . The expulsion and persecution of the upper Jewish bourgeoisie, which played an important intellectual role, which began with the annexation of Austria , put an end to the era of coffee house literary writers, although some writers continued their work in exile.

The café served the authors as an inspiration for social studies, casual literature and feature sections . Literature is pursued as a pastime, the texts are often only fragmentary , fleeting notes, impressions and conversations. Peter Altenberg speaks of "extracts of life". Many intellectuals spent hours in the coffeehouse, the compulsion to consume was unknown, in order to exchange ideas with one another. The late 1880s was in Griensteidl of Hermann Bahr , the group Young Vienna founded. After the Griensteidl was closed in 1897, the Café Central developed into a meeting place for literary greats. The Café Museum designed by Adolf Loos and, especially after the First World War, the Café Herrenhof were also among the literary cafés.

The regular audience of the Viennese coffee houses included the writers Alfred Adler , Peter Altenberg, Hermann Bahr, Richard Beer-Hofmann , Hermann Broch , Egon Friedell , Hugo von Hofmannsthal , Karl Kraus , Anton Kuh , Robert Musil , Leo Perutz , Ernst Polak , Alfred Polgar , Joseph Roth , Felix Salten , Arthur Schnitzler , Friedrich Torberg and Franz Werfel , but also painters such as Gustav Klimt , Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka , the architects Adolf Loos and Otto Wagner and the composers Franz Lehár and Alban Berg .

In other cities of the monarchy, such as Prague ( Egon Erwin Kisch ), Budapest ( Ferenc Molnár , Dezső Kosztolányi ), Pressburg , Brno , Jihlava , Ljubljana , Krakow ( Stanislaw Przybyszewski ), Trieste and Zagreb ( Antun Gustav Matoš ), coffee house literature was created. The Prague German-speaking writers met in the "Continental", where Gustav Meyrink and Max Brod were regulars, and in the " Café Arco ", where Franz Werfel and Franz Kafka frequented. The Czech coffee house scene gathered in “Café Union” (such as Jaroslav Hašek and the Čapek brothers ) and later in Café Slavia , which became a meeting place for the avant-garde . In Budapest the Café New York , the “Abbazia”, the “Central” and the “Hadik” should be mentioned, in which, for example, Frigyes Karinthy wrote, in Trieste the San Marco ( Italo Svevo , James Joyce ). The Jama Michalika in Krakow was a center of literary cabaret.

There is also coffeehouse literature in cities outside Austria-Hungary, although some of it has different characteristics. Examples are the “Odeon” in Zurich, the “ Café du Dôme ” and the “Café Flore” in Paris and the “Verbano” café in Ascona. In Berlin, the “ Romanisches Café ” and the “ megalomania ” were the most important gatherings for artists and intellectuals. Among others, Stefan Zweig , Erich Kästner , Ernst Deutsch , Gottfried Benn , Joachim Ringelnatz , Irmgard Keun and Grete Mosheim , Billy Wilder and Erich Maria Remarque traveled there .

The café as a workshop

In “Die Welt von Gestern” (The World of Yesterday), Stefan Zweig describes his youth in the coffee house in retrospect.

“The Viennese coffee house is a special kind of institution that cannot be compared with any similar institution in the world. It is actually a kind of democratic club, accessible to everyone for a cheap cup of coffee, where every guest can sit for hours, discuss, write, play cards, receive their mail and, above all, consume an unlimited number of newspapers and magazines for this small fee ”. And further: “So we knew firsthand everything that was going on in the world, we found out about every book that came out, from every performance and compared the reviews in every newspaper; Nothing has contributed so much to the intellectual agility of the Austrian than that in the coffee house he was able to orient himself comprehensively about all things going on in the world and at the same time to discuss them in friendly circles. We sat for hours every day, and nothing escaped us. Because, thanks to the collectivity of our interests, we followed the orbis pictus of artistic events not with two, but with twenty and forty eyes (...) "

Examples and literature

  • Peter Altenberg: Night Café. In: New Berlin . Berlin 1911.
  • Peter Altenberg: That's how I became. Regular guests. In: Semmering . Berlin 1913.
  • Peter Altenberg: coffee house. In: Vita ipsa . Berlin 1918.
  • Franz Werfel: In the coffee house for God and Lenin. In: Barbara or piety . Berlin / Vienna / Leipzig 1929.
  • Franz Werfel: The last coffee house writer. In: Between above and below . Munich / Vienna 1975.
  • Géza von Cziffra: Anton Kuh, the Schnorrer King. In: The cow in the coffee house. The roaring twenties in anecdotes . Munich / Berlin 1981.
  • Ludwig Hirschfeld: Coffee house culture. In: The Book of Vienna. What is not in the Baedeker . 1927
  • Felix Salten : From the beginning. Memory sketches. In: Yearbook of German Bibliophiles and Literature Friends . Berlin 1933
  • Stefan Zweig: The coffee house as an educational institution. Youth in the Griensteidl. In: Yesterday's World . Stockholm 1944.
  • Karl Kraus : The demolished literature. In: Early writings 1892–1900 . Frankfurt am Main 1988.
  • Anton Kuh : Central and Herrenhof. Lenin and Demel from the air . Vienna 1981.
  • Anton Kuh: Zeitgeist in the literature café. Café de l'Europe . Vienna 1983.
  • Alfred Polgar : The Theory of Café Central. In: Small Fonts . Reinbek 1983.
  • Hilde Spiel : Return to the manor house. In: Return to Vienna. Diary . Munich 1968.
  • Friedrich Torberg: Treatise on the Viennese coffee house. Sacher and Wider-Sacher, Café de l'Europe - Café Imperial. In: The Aunt Jolesch or The Decline of the Occident in Anecdotes . Munich 1975.
  • Hans Weigel: The coffee house as will and idea. In: The Viennese coffee house . Vienna / Zurich / Munich 1978.
  • Oskar Kokoschka : About Adolf Loos. Career at Café Central. In: My life . Munich 1971
  • Gina Kaus: Living in the Herrenhof. In: And what kind of life ... with love and literature, theater and film . Hamburg 1979.
  • Heimito von Doderer : My café houses. In: Franz Hubmann: Café Hawelka. A Viennese myth . Vienna 1982.
  • Friedrich Hansen-Löwe: Coffee house company. In: Franz Hubmann: Café Hawelka. A Viennese myth . Vienna 1982.
  • André Heller : A place of obvious deceptions. In: Franz Hubmann: Café Hawelka. A Viennese myth . Vienna 1982.
  • Friederike Mayröcker : For Josefine Hawelka. In: Magical Leaves . Frankfurt am Main 1983.
  • Milan Dubrovic: Diagnosis of the literary café . A writer without work In: Misappropriated history. The Viennese salons and literary cafés . Vienna / Hamburg 1985.
  • Barbara Frischmuth : Café Fluch . 1997.
  • Ernst Hinterberger: The coffee houses of the others. My coffeehouse . 1997.
  • Robert Menasse : Profession coffee house guest . 1997.
  • Ernst Molden : The devil in prückel. In: The crocodile lady . Munich 1997.
  • Susanne Widl : A small coffee house philosophy . 1997 in: [Susanne] Widl: My life in the mirror of the media , with contributions by Gregor Auerhammer and many others, Verlag für Moderne Kunst, Vienna 2016, ISBN 978-3-86984-098-7 , pp. 332–335.
  • Christoph Braendle: Coffee house blues. In: love, joy and beautiful death. Viennese sonatas. Picus, Vienna 1998, ISBN 3-85452-708-X .

literature

University publications

  • Christine Scherzinger: Timelessly in - timelessly out: the café in contemporary German society; a cultural-sociological study , Tectum, Marburg 2005, ISBN 978-3-8288-8915-6 (Dissertation Fernuniversität Hagen 2005, 266 pages, illustrated and with graphic representations, 21 cm)
  • Carina Trapper: place of writing or staging? The literary coffee house between existence and appearance . 2009, (Diploma thesis University of Vienna, May 2009, full text online PDF, free of charge).

Web links

Wiktionary: Coffee house literacy  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Rössner : Literary Coffee Houses. Coffeehouse literary figures. On the peculiarities of literature production and reception in the coffee house .