Viennese coffee-house culture: what Austria's national inventory lists, and what it does not

The short answer

Viennese coffee-house culture, Wiener Kaffeehauskultur, is on Austria's national inventory of intangible cultural heritage, entered in 2011 as a social practice in Vienna.[1] The inventory is kept by the Austrian Commission for UNESCO, which has been responsible for implementing the 2003 intangible heritage convention in Austria since the country joined it in 2009.[7]

It is not on UNESCO's international lists. UNESCO's own Austria page lists twelve inscribed elements, from the Imst Schemenlaufen to dry stone walling, and none of them concerns coffee houses.[8] "UNESCO-listed coffee houses" is therefore a loose description of a national listing.

What the entry describes

The inventory entry defines the tradition by its setting. It names marble tables on which the coffee is served, Thonet chairs, booths, newspaper tables and interior details in the historicist style as typical of a Viennese coffee house. It quotes a description of the coffee house as a place where time and space are consumed but only the coffee appears on the bill,[1] a line taken from the coffee-house owners' own application.[2]

Its history runs from the end of the seventeenth century. The entry links the beginnings to the Ottoman siege, credits the first Viennese coffee house to an Armenian spy named Deodato who had been charged by the court with preparing coffee, and says the Kramersches Kaffeehaus am Graben was the first to lay out newspapers, in 1720. It then describes Napoleon's continental blockade as a near-ruinous test, during which coffee houses were first allowed to serve wine and warm food, notes that women were admitted in 1856, and ends with the founding of the Klub der Wiener Kaffeehausbesitzer in 1956.[1]

Who applied, and what they said was at risk

National inventory entries start with the people who keep a tradition. The Commission's application rules say communities propose elements themselves, with a form, two expert letters, photographs and consent declarations, and that a tradition must be practised today and normally passed on over at least three generations. An interdisciplinary advisory board, with representatives of two federal ministries, the federal states and twelve experts, decides on inclusion.[5]

For the coffee house, the applicant was the Klub der Wiener Kaffeehausbesitzer, and the Commission publishes its application with the entry.[1] The form describes the Klub's role as representing its members to the media and business and keeping the tradition alive through cultural projects, training and excursions.[2]

The applicants also named what they saw as threats in 2011: fast coffee chains offering speed without tradition, the smoking ban imposed on coffee houses as public spaces, the tax burden, and the difficulty of selling a coffee house when a family does not hand it on to the next generation.[2] Those are the applicants' views at the time, not XTOUR's assessment of the trade today.

One of the expert letters filed with the application, written in 2011 by Michael Rössner of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, argues that Vienna's coffee houses, unlike those in many other European cities, did not turn into museums and tourist temples but stayed part of everyday life.[3]

Listing brings no money. The application form and the Commission's rules both say inclusion gives no claim to financial support or other legal rights.[5][2]

Where the City of Vienna's history wiki differs

The Wien Geschichte Wiki, the City of Vienna's online history encyclopedia, has its own long entry on the coffee house, and on several points it does not tell the inventory's story.

• The first coffee house. The inventory entry names Deodato as the founder of the first coffee house.[1] The application tells the older story first, that Georg Franz Kolschitzky was rewarded with coffee beans after the 1683 siege and opened a coffee house, calls it one version, and then says that in reality Deodato founded the first one.[2] The city's wiki calls the Kolschitzky story a legend refuted by the historian Karl Teply, and dates the first privilege to serve coffee publicly, granted to the Armenian Johannes Deodat (Diodato), to 17 January 1685. The wiki also notes that the coffee-makers' guild coat of arms of 1904 still showed Kolschitzky as Vienna's first coffee-maker.[9]
• The Napoleonic shortage. The inventory gives the blockade as 1803 to 1813 and says Vienna's coffee houses stood close to ruin.[1] The wiki dates the blockade to 21 November 1806, the ban on serving coffee to 1 August 1810 and its lifting to 1 July 1813, and says the coffee houses' existence was not at stake.[9]
• Women. The inventory says women were finally admitted in 1856.[1] The wiki finds women among coffee-house guests from 1840, while describing the separate "ladies' coffee house" of the time as looked down on.[9]
• The Nazi years. The inventory entry does not mention them. The wiki records that after 1938 coffee houses with Jewish owners were forced to close or were "aryanised" and sold far below their value, and that the Café Herrenhof and the Ring-Café were closed for ideological reasons, as places that stood for "Jewish coffee-house culture".[9] The Commission's current application rules ask applicants to name and critically explain any past appropriation or instrumentalisation of a practice.[5] XTOUR does not know whether that rule applied when the coffee-house entry was made in 2011.

The wiki dates the inventory entry to 10 November 2011 and records that the Thonet firm first made the typical coffee-house chair around 1850.[9]

National inventory and international lists

The Austrian Commission for UNESCO explains the two levels. Elements enter the national inventory by decision of its advisory board and thereby become intangible cultural heritage in Austria; separately, UNESCO keeps international lists, on which intergovernmental bodies decide.[4] Its page on the international level names three lists and the Austrian elements on the Representative List, among them the classical horsemanship of the Spanish Riding School, falconry, transhumance and, most recently, dry stone walling.[6]

The two official sources do not give the same count. The Commission's page comparing intangible heritage with World Heritage says that 14 of more than 700 international entries are also registered for Austria, while UNESCO's Austria page lists 12 inscribed elements.[8][4] None of UNESCO's 12 concerns the coffee house, so the difference does not change the answer here. The twelve are set out in Austria's intangible heritage.

What XTOUR does not tell you

XTOUR does not recommend or rank coffee houses, and does not say which of today's cafés the Klub counts as traditional. XTOUR publishes no opening hours, prices or house customs, and makes no claim about how coffee houses are used by visitors or residents today beyond what the cited sources say.

For the city itself, see the Vienna destination page; Austria gathers XTOUR's other Austrian guides.