Vienna's Cafe Louvre in the 1920s & 1930s: Meeting Place for Foreign Correspondents

Insertar Doc
Copiar dirección
Readcast
Colecciones

ComentarVolver

Descarga

VIENNA'S CAFÉ LOUVREIN THE 1920s & 1930s:

Meeting Place forForeign Correspondents

By Dan DurningFebruary 2012

(Version 1.0)

1

VIENNA'S CAFÉ LOUVRE IN THE '20s & '30s:

The Meeting Place for International Correspondents

By Dan DurningFebruary 2012

Down in Vienna, before the Nazis acidized the pearl of European culture,there was a little place not far from the Ringstrasse known as the CaféLouvre. It was simple and unpretentious, although its head-waiter, Gustav,could produce marvelous schnitzel for a mere two marks. But the important point about the Louvre is that the fact-seeking customer, by dropping in at any time after 11 p.m. could obtain gratis an up-to-the-minute bulletin onBalkan affairs.

(Joseph H. Baird. Wine, Diplomats and News.

The SundayMorning Star

[Wilmington, Delaware], May 10, 1942, p. 2.

Introduction

If you were an American or British correspondent in Vienna during the latter yearsof the 1920s or during the 1930s, you likely spent many of your late afternoons andat least some of your evenings at the Café Louvre. There, you sat at a reservedtable

—

a Stammtisch

—

over which Robert Best, correspondent for the United Pressnews agency, presided, and exchanged the latest news and gossip. Others at thetable included a mixture of fellow correspondents, paid news tipsters, and othershired to help you with your reporting. Also, on any given night, the table had anarray of visiting journalists; political refugees, each with their own causes; famouswriters, composers, and artists; local and visiting intellectuals; and, sometimes,spies.Café Louvre played an essential role in the news gathering work of foreign journalists in Vienna, and it also enriched the social lives of the journalists and theirfamilies. Similar to the Hotel Adlon and its bar in Berlin, Café Louvre was a place topal around with colleagues, to meet news sources, to gather intelligence, and tocultivate the personal relationships essential to success as an internationalcorrespondent.The frequent visits to the Café Louvre helped the journalists with a daunting jobthat required reporting news from a huge area that encompassed the manycountries in Central Europe and the Balkans. The only way they could cover such alarge territory was with the help of good contacts, local news services, tipsters, andother journalists doing the same job. John Gunther, writing in 1935 about his workas a foreign correspondent in Vienna, explained:[T]he basis of journalism in Europe is friendship...News gathering in Europeis largely a collaboration whereby men who know and trust one anotherexchange gossip, background, and information." [Gunther 1935, p.202]

2In Vienna, at the time Gunther wrote his about his job, Café Louvre was the placewhere much of the news gathering took place.

Coffee Houses in Vienna

It is not surprising that coffee houses played an important role in the lives of foreign journalists in Vienna. They had been woven into the social fabric of Vienna'ssociety during the Hapsburg Empire, and they became even more essential to thelives of Viennese after World War I.Louis Fischer, an American journalist who lived in Vienna in the early 1920s.explained the attraction of coffee houses for Viennese in the difficult years followingWW I by telling the story of an impoverished professor of English literature whosesmall two-room apartment was "cold and dark." To escape those conditions, theprofessor went every night at 8 pm to a café. According to Fischer:The café was large and roomy and its upholstered seats were soft. ProfessorOttwald had his own table, marble-covered like all the rest, and nobody elseused it. Friends knew they could find him there from eight to eleven-fifteen.It was his Stammtisch [a table reserved for regular customers]. His waiterapproached, addressed him cordially by name, chatted for a moment, andwent off to bring him a cup of coffee and two glasses of water on a metaltray. Another employee in special uniform came over and handed him the

Frankfurter Zeitung

, published in Germany. After a while, the sameemployee, having observed that the professor had turned to the last page of the

Frankfurter

silently laid the

London Times

on the cool slab." [Fischer1946, p.19]More than a decade later, in the 1930s, the Viennese coffee house still offered thesame amenities and held the same attraction.For Gunther, who reported from Vienna for the

Chicago Daily News

, and mostother Anglo-American journalists, the coffee houses were essential to their dailylabor. Gunther's work routine included a visit at about eleven a.m. to the CaféImperial where he meet with a group of friends

—

mostly journalists and localsselling new tips

—

for a discussion of the latest news and rumors, then he spent timein the afternoons at Café Louvre. He wrote:The coffee house is, of course, the inner soul of Vienna, the essentialembodiment of the spirit of the town. It is, as everyone knows, much morethan just a place to drink coffee in. Coffee you may have, in literally fortydifferent varies, but you have also literature, conversation, and peace of souland mind. And in the Café Imperial, in the morning, and in the more modestCafé Louvre, in the afternoon, you get journalism, Viennese-brand. [Gunther1935, p.201]

3In short, as Frederick Scheu [1972, pp.20-21], a Viennese who wrote for Britishnewspapers in the 1930s, explained, for the price of a cup of coffee journalistsreceived a nice drink, a temporary office they could use

—

without hassle

—

for aslong as they wanted, and free access to the newspapers of Vienna and the world. Inregard to free newspapers, Gunther [1935, p.104] noted that the Café Imperial hadabout 20 Viennese newspapers and between 40 and 50 foreign newspapers, and"for the price of a drink you may sit all day and read the lot."

Café Louvre: Vienna's Coffee House for Foreign Journalists

One interesting feature of Vienna's coffee houses was that a particular Viennacoffee house often became the main meeting place or hang out for a specific typeof clientele. In the early 1920s, for example, Fischer [1946, p.20] observed:The café in Vienna was home and political arena. Certain cafés werefrequented by Socialists and no Monarchist would enter them. TheMonarchists had their own cafés. Other cafés whose high prices kept ordinarymortals out attracted currency speculators. In still other coffee houses long-haired poets and "left-wing prostitutes" abounded.In the 1930s, according to different writers, coffee houses still had their specialclientele. For example, the Café Imperial

—

where Gunther met his colleagues eachday

—

was a place where Balkan spies and revolutionaries hung out; Café Pucherwas a café popular with Austrian politicians; Café Central, on Herrengasse, was ameeting place for émigré intellectuals; Café Museum was a place for artists andarchitects; and Café Rebhuhn (near St. Stephens) was a café frequented byAustrian journalists and commentators. [See Björkman-Goldsmith 2007, p.122;Shirer 1952, p.52-53; Cuthbertson 1992, p.104]Although British and American journalistsmight go to many different cafés in thecourse of their work, often to meet withdiplomats, politicians, bureaucrats, andshady characters who could help them findand write news, Café Louvre became themain coffee house of foreign journalists.Scheu [1972, p.20] called it the "marketexchange for international news" ["Das CaféLouvre war die Börse fürAuslandsnachrichten."]How well did the Anglo-American journalists adapt to the ways of the traditionalViennese coffee house? Apparently pretty well. Else Björkman-Goldsmith, in herbook recalling life in Vienna, wrote about its coffee houses in the 1930s, noting therole of Café Louvre as the hangout for foreign journalists. She wrote, "There [atCafé Louvre] the old Vienna coffee-house traditions had to be defended against theattacks of people from other countries." She wrote that over time the foreigners

Vienna's Cafe Imperial in 1920

de 18

Dejar un comentario

scribd. scribd. scribd. scribd. scribd.