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History
The Café Hawelka in the 1st District of Vienna represents one of the last great Central European tradition of writers and artists coffeehouses as exemplified in Vienna by the Café Central before the First World War and the Café Herrenhof before the Second. It is still run by Leopold Hawelka and his wife Josefine just as they did when they opened for business over sixty years ago.
Leopold Hawelka began his long career as Cafétier with the Café Alt Wien in the Bäckerstrasse in 1936 but in May 1939 he and his wife decided to take over the defunct Café Ludwig in the Dorotheergasse. These premises had originally opened in 1906 as the "Je t aime" Bar, the first bar in the modern sense in Vienna, with a live band and a chambre separée (now the store room). The interior decoration, by a pupil of the renowned Jugendstil architect Adolf Loos, was intact when the Hawelkas took over and has remained untouched ever since. (The panelled ceiling to the rear of the coffeehouse was only rediscovered and opened up by Herr Hawelka in the 1960s.)
The outbreak of war in September 1939 forced the new Café Hawelka to close. When the Hawelkas returned to Vienna in 1945 they found that, miraculously, in spite of the extensive damage suffered by the most of the surrounding buildings, their coffeehouse had survived the war without a single broken pane of glass. The house was also one of the first to have been reconnected to the mains. Post-war has been vividly depicted in Carol Reeds famous film "The Third Man" (indeed the Casanova bar, featured in the film, is next door to the Hawelka) but in spite of the shortages, wrecked infrastructure and the perils of the black market, the Hawelkas were able to acquire the necessary supplies and reopen the coffeehouse in the autumn of 1945. Coffee was prepared on a wood-burning stove and when the winter came Herr Hawelka himself had to take a pushcart to the Vienna Woods to gather firewood while Frau Hawelka looked after the guests. The coffeehouse soon became a convenient central meeting place for the inhabitants of an occupied and divided city and for those returning from the War or from emigration, providing an ideal environment to escape from the hardships of the times. The warm and peaceful atmosphere of the coffeehouse proved particularly attractive to writers and intellectuals for many of whom it soon became a second home.
By the time the Allies left Vienna in 1955, the Café Hawelka was frequented by such writers as Friedrich Torberg, Heimito von Doderer, Hilde Spiel and Hans Weigl. With the closure of the Café Herrenhof in 1961, most of the remaining members of its influential writers circle moved to the Hawelka and the little coffeehouse reigned supreme as the literary café.
The late Fifties and early Sixties was a time not only of great literary and artistic activity in Austria, but also of great economic growth. The new Italian-style espresso bars that were opening up all over Vienna at that time seemed to suit the faster pace of life far better then the traditional coffeehouse and indeed many great coffeehouses were closing down to make way for banks or car showrooms. Herr Hawelkas one concession to modernity was to install an espresso machine (which irritated some guests with its noise), but the coffeehouse survived as a timeless haven through the loyalty of its regulars.
Artists too had been discovering the Hawelka and by the mid-Sixties even some of the younger, wilder generation such as Friedensreich Hundertwasser, Ernst Fuchs, Arik Brauer, Rudolf Hausner, Hubert Aratym and Wolfgang Hutter could be found whiling away the time into the early hours. The atmosphere of the quiet, smoky, male-dominated reading-room became charged with the youthful vigour of the decade (often to the consternation of the old literati!).One wall became covered with posters advertising the latest exhibitions, concerts and lectures (an innovation of Herr Hawelkas now established in most cafés in Austria), on the other walls grew Herr Hawelkas collection of pictures by his more talented costumers (always purchased at the market price!).
During the Sixties and Seventies the Café Hawelka represented all that was fresh and energetic in the Viennese artistic scene. As well as most of the members Fantastic Realists the regulars included the poets, H.C. Artmann, Friedrich Achleitner and Gerhard Rühm, the actor Oskar Werner and the cabaretist Helmut Qualtinger, the conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt, the singer Georg Danzer, André Heller and the photographer Franz Hubmann , who has immortalised the coffeehouse over the decades through his pictures. Famous names from abroad never failed to visit the café Hawelka when in Vienna: Elias Canetti, Henry Miller, Arthur Miller and Andy Warhol to name a few. Politicians and journalists would flock to the coffeehouse to discover the latest trends. The crowds came to see and be seen and the Café Hawelka became an Institution with Herr and Frau Hawelka becoming as famous as their guests.
The renown of the Café Hawelka spread into the guide books and as the enfants terribles of the Sixties joined the Establishment and took up their professorial seats, so their places in the coffeehouses were taken by tourists and those hoping to bask in the limelight of the remaining celebrities.
While the Glory Years may have passed, it is the outside world that has changed and not the Café Hawelka. It still provides a refuge for many artists, writers and musicians.
Three generations of Hawelkas now work in the coffeehouse, but Herr Hawelka still presides over his domain by day, greeting each guest personally. Late each evening, as every evening for over half a century, the smell of Frau Hawelkas legendary Buchteln wafts through the room.
Download: History
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Café Hawelka
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