LIST OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE BOOKS AND ARTICLES RELEVANT TO VIENNA COFFEE HOUSES

Bob Corbett, instructor
FIN-DE-SICLE VIENNESE CULTURE AND THE COFFEEHOUSE
GNST 1400, Spring 2001

• Anonymous.
  
  
  • 1999a. AUF EINE MELANGE IM CAFE IMPERIAL
    From: Luxury Collection, 1, 1999. Published in Vienna. Pages 44-45.
    
    Despite the title, this short article is 1/2 in English. However, there is little on the hisotry of the Cafe Imperial, but a could of nice photos.

  • 1999b. WELCOME TO THE CLUB...
    From: Luxury Collection, 1, 1999. Published in Vienna. Pages 36-39.
    
    The short magazine article which is in actually two similar articles, one in German and one in English, but not identical, features a few major people at Central including Adolf Loos, Lev Bronstein (Leon Trotsky) and Peter Altenberg, plus various notes on the history of the cafe. Nice photos as well.

• Augustin, Andreas

  HOTEL IMPERIAL VIENNA London: No date or publisher listed.
  ISBN # 3-900-692-03-3.
  
  A lovely book filled with anecdotes and marvelous photos. This is more a history of the hotel as the title indicates, but several things about the coffee house in the Impeial and the relationship between the hotel and the coffee house are included.

• Hofmann, Paul.
  

  • 1988. THE VIENNESE: SPLENDOR, TWILIGHT AND EXILE.
    New York: Anchor Doubleday, 1988. ISBN #0-385-23975-0
    
    This book has a one significant section on the coffee houses of the turn of the century and who hung out where. Then, along the way there are many other shorter mentions of the same sort. Well indexed.

  • 1994. THE SPELL OF THE VIENNA WOODS.
    New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1994. ISBN # 0-8050-3850-7
    
    As the title suggests, this is not on the coffee houses, but on the areas surrounding Vienna. Nonetheless, many mentions of personalities and coffee houses creep into among the trees of the Vienna Woods.

• Janik, Allan and Stephen Toulmin

  WITTGENSTEIN'S VIENNA New York: A Touchstone Book published by Simon and Schuster, 1973.
  ISBN # 671-21725-9.
  
  There is nothing in Wittgenstein's life itself about the coffee house or any contributions to the particular modernist movement. Nonetheless Janik and Toulmin treat the wider period and useful sections on Arthur Schnitzler. Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Adolf Loos, Arnold Schonberg and many other notable figures of the turn of the century intellectual movements.

• Johnston, William M.

  THE AUSTRIAN MIND: AN INTELLECTUAL AND SOCIAL HISTORY 1848-1938 Berkeley: University o California Press, 1972.
  ISBN # 0-520-04855-1.
  
  This is a heavy-duty treatise of intellectual history. It is not aimed at modernism nor the coffee house culture itself, but has excellent contributory material. A section of chapter 7 is entitled "Coversation Triumphant in Coffeehouse and Feuilleton". This is an especially illuminating treatment of the feuilleton as a literary genre. Additionally he does a nice job of clarifying the aesceticism of escapism and attitudes of political nihilism among the intellectuals of the turn of the century movements.

• Linton, Douglas.

  TO THE COFFEE HOUSE!: AN INSIDERS GUIDE TO VIENNA'S CAFES. Vienna: Glattau & Schaar Verlagsges, 1998.
  ISBN # 3-9500-828-3-2.
  
  This small book is devoted exclusively to the coffeehouses. It lists nearly 50 in the first district, and then many more by Vienna districts. Each entry tells the location and nearest public transportation connection. On the better known houses there is usually an entry that tells a bit about the history and also gives comparative prices for a grosser brauner, schnitzel, beer and such to give you an idea of prices.

• Rickett, Richard, translator.

  A VIENNESE COFFEEHOUSE
  
  Vienna: Josef Gerstmayer, printer. no date., 24 pages
  
  This older booklet has a history of coffee's arrival in Vienna and some early history of Landtmann's. It also has a guest book in the back listing many famous people who have visited Landtmann's in the past.

• Schorske, Carl E.

  FIN-DE-SIECLE VIENNA: POLITICS AND CULTURE.
  Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961.
  ISBN: 0-394-74478-0.
  
  A very scholarly work that isn't directly on the coffee houses, but on the period in which they flourished and about the personalities who inhabited them. This book is the best intellectual history of the period available in English.

• Segel, Harold B.

  THE VIENNA COFFEEHOUSE WITS 1890 - 1938
  West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 1993.
  ISBN # 1-55753-064-5
  
  A 390 page book devoted to the writings concerning coffee houses, personalities and timely topics of Vienna's turn of the century period. It has lengthy selections from Hermann Bahr, Kral Krauss, Peter Altenberg, Felix Salten, Egon Friedell, Alfred Polgar, Anton Kuh and Edmund Wengraf.

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