The Viennese coffee house is a typical institution of Vienna that played an important part in shaping Viennese culture. Since October 2011 the “Viennese Coffee House Culture” is listed as “Intangible Cultural Heritage” in the Austrian inventory of the “National Agency for the Intangible Cultural Heritage”, a part of UNESCO. The Viennese coffee house is described in this inventory as a place, “where time and space are consumed, but only the coffee is found on the bill.”
The social practices, the rituals, the elegance create the very specific atmosphere of the Viennese café. Coffee Houses entice with a wide variety of coffee drinks, international newspapers, and pastry creations. Typical for Viennese Coffee Houses are marble tabletops, Thonet chairs, newspaper tables and interior design details in the style of Historicism. The Austrian writer Stefan Zweig described the Viennese Coffee House as an institution of a special kind, “actually a sort of democratic club, open to everyone for the price of a cheap cup of coffee, where every guest can sit for hours with this little offering, to talk, write, play cards, receive post, and above all consume an unlimited number of newspapers and journals.” Zweig in fact attributed a good measure of Vienna’s cosmopolitan air to the rich daily diet of current and international information offered in the coffee houses.
In many classic cafés (for example Café Central and Café Prückel) piano music is played in the evening and social events like literary readings are held. In warmer months, customers can often sit outside in a Schanigarten. Almost all coffee houses provide small food dishes like sausages as well as desserts, cakes and tarts, like Apfelstrudel, Millirahmstrudel, Punschkrapfen and Linzer torte.
Unlike some other café traditions around the world, it is completely normal for a customer to linger alone for hours and study the omnipresent newspaper. Along with coffee, the waiter will serve an obligatory glass of cold tap water and during a long stay will often bring additional water unrequested, with the idea to serve the guest with an exemplary sense of attention.
In the late 19th and early 20th century, leading writers of the time became attached to the atmosphere of Viennese cafés and were frequently seen to meet, exchange and to even write there. Literature composed in cafés is commonly referred to as coffee house literature, the writers thereof as coffee house poets. The famous journal Die Fackel (“The Torch”) by Karl Kraus is said to have been written in cafés to a large extent. Other coffee house poets include Arthur Schnitzler, Alfred Polgar, Friedrich Torberg, and Egon Erwin Kisch. Famous writer and poet Peter Altenberg even had his mail delivered to his favorite café, the Café Central.
