| Abstract [eng] |
Based on Michael Rössner and Carine Trapper’s studies and the memoirs and feuilletons of the Viennese coffeehouse literati, the article concisely considers the genesis of Vienna’s coffeehouse literati before a German invasion in 1938. The article confines itself to the Café Griensteidl, Café Central, and Herrenhof, three major coffeehouses literati: the conditions of their setting up and closing down, literary programmes offered by regular visitors at the coffeehouses, the so-called emotional attitude of the coffeehouse, as well as the conditions under which they were generally able to exist. At the stage of the Café Griensteidl, also known as Café Megalomania, the Young Vienna movement centered on Hermann Bahr to declare naturalism in literature and art to be at an end. On the other hand, in contrast to artists the literati of the given stage who later shifted to the Café Central combined salon writing and cafe culture whereby the coffeehouse was seen as a place of writing or even “lifestyle”, “emotional attitude”. At the stage of the Herrenhof, attempts were made to overcome an impressionistic sense of life upheld at the Café Central, the bohemian lifestyle, decadence and dandyism, and to refuel art, politics and literature discussions originating from the café setting with a tincture of revolutionary activism and anarchism. The Herrenhof literati were interrelated by lasciviousness and the demand for opioid intoxication carried over from the Café Central and promoted by psychoanalyst Otto Gross. Critical feeling and impotence of the modern individual to apprehend the causes of the impending catastrophe constituted an essential condition for cafe culture development. Anticipation of the imminent collapse of the Habsburg monarchy was driving the literati to abundant cafés in Vienna. [...]. |
