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]
Dejar un comentario