15 June 1922: The old Vienna cafe was a bourgeoise institution, but the middle class has become so poor and desperate that it can no longer pay even the small price of a cup of coffee
Recently Clément Vautel, on the occasion of Henry Murger’s centenary, complained in the Paris Journal of the passing of the Paris bohemians. Vienna, the city where Mozart, Beethoven, Gluck, Haydn, Strauss, and the composers of most of the best modern musical comedies lived and worked – this city, gay and beautiful, where art is a living thing, was second only to Paris in its cult of the bohemian, and as the Rodolphs and Marcels, the Chaunards and Collines, had their Café Momus, and the later generation of bohemians, headed by Verlaine, Mérimée, Manet, Degas, their Closerie de Lilas, Nouvelle Athene, and Café d’Harcourt, so also four generations of Vienna art had close connection with the cafe.
The cafe here has replaced the home. The student spent most of his leisure time – and too many of his university hours in it. Lawyers and merchants met in the cafe to discuss their cases or do their business. The scientist went to a cafe where he could read the chief scientific papers of the world for the price of a cup of coffee. The man in the street went there to read the Vienna dailies and perhaps the German, English, and French journals. The hausfrau was served with the latest “Mode Blatter” and selected from it her season’s frocks. All the news of the world was available for 40 heller, or a “Mocha Kaffee,” and while the cafe patron read or chatted he could listen to a first-class orchestra play Italian or German operas and sweet Viennese songs.
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