TURN OF THE CENTURY VIENNA: Liberalism, Coffeehouses, and Misogyny

 

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Viennese coffeehouses in the turn of the 19^th century were home to intellectuals who shaped Europe through new ideas in literature, sciences, and the arts. Even though it was a period of progressiveness, it was also a time of race and gender exclusion where anti-Semitism and antifeminism were on the rise. Ironically, earlier in the century, Vienna was known for its bourgeois salons, where elite women—including Jewish women—played an important role in shaping political thoughts, critical thinking, as well promoting literature and the arts. The history of the salons and coffeehouses in Vienna reflects the political turning points this multiethnic city had lived through—liberalism, social democracy, and fascism—as well as the sexual anxieties which emerged along the way.

The Salon and Coffeehouse

Up until the end of the 19^th century under Emperor Franz Joseph's open door policy—which provided freedom of movements and equal rights—multiculturalism and liberalism flourished in Vienna. The city setting with its coffeehouses reflected this ideology. Being the city of immigrants, Vienna’s complex cultural hybrid influenced ideas which developed throughout Europe.

In the 19^th century, the influx of Jews to Vienna continued to increase in great numbers. According to Erika Weinzierl (2003: 2), by 1923 the Jewish population in Vienna reached 10.8 per cent, while in 1857, it was 2.16 percent. They later dominated the white-collar labor force. The rapid advancement of the Jewish middle-class was a consequence of the Jews being granted equal civil and legal rights in 1867. The Jewish ethnic group in Vienna also formed the city’s intellectuals, artists, writers, and middle-class elites.

The European sophisticated salon culture which boomed earlier in the 19^th century was conceived by the middle and upper classes. The salons provided space for intellectual discussion and critical thinking. Furthermore, it provided a space for the integration of the Jews with society's elites. In Vienna as in other cities such as Berlin, many of these salons were hosted by Jewish women.

Fanny von Arnstein was a Jewish women in Vienna who started her salon career in the 1780s. By 1880, her salon became the center of a salon network for intellectual and musical women. Arnstein’s success welcomed Jews to the elite circles of Vienna. In 1815 Fanny and her Prussian friends raised the idea of equal rights for Jews to be included in the constitution of the German Confederation, albeit with not much luck. Other famous salons in Vienna for young writers and modern intellectuals included those hosted by Jewish woman, Bertha Zuckerkandl, who was herself a journalist and essay writer.

An Evening with Schubert at a Salon in Vienna by Julius Schmid (akg-images.co.uk/)

 

When the coffeehouse or the café was the place to hang out for the less wealthy, it became an important part of Viennese urban life. Much like an emerging metropolis, the coffeehouse was a melting pot that thrives on inclusiveness. Visitors from a diverse background were welcomed. While there were cafés where the working class would gather and others where the young intellectuals or artists meet, class boundaries have been said to be far less vivid in the coffeehouse. In fact, the coffeehouse was in a way the second home for intellectuals and artists of the time as it became an extension of the tiny flats they lived in—the living room they could not afford.

Furthermore, the history of some of the coffeehouses is associated with the identity of a group or a generation, such as literary movements. People, including Jewish intellectuals, associated with the Young Vienna modernist literary movement gathered at the Griensteidl café. It was the age of modernism and the new generation wanted to break with traditional values. But at the same time, this was also a period of separate spheres for women and men. Unfortunately, the coffeehouses supported this ideology. The coffeehouse was mainly a male domain.

Misogyny at the Turn of the Century 

The Austrian women’s movement began in the late 1840s, particularly when women workers took the streets to protest against women’s lower wages. Different women’s association were established in the late 1860s but the separate struggle between the bourgeois-liberals who focused on women's education and the social democrats who represented the interest of the working class, hindered the development of a large-scale women’s movement. Women also assembled based on their ethnicity which posed further challenges.

The women's movement became better organized over the years, but resistance also grew stronger. The 19^th century was a period where liberalism was at its peak, a time where a rising intellectual bourgeois class existed alongside the aristocracy. Jewish women in Vienna played an important role in the advancement of liberalism and feminism. However, from the last decade of the century up to 1914—a period scholars call “Fin-de-Siècle” or turn of the century—was a time when anti-Semitism, misogyny, and antifeminism were on the rise.

... Rapid changes in the economy, political life, culture, and values have created confusion and anxiety that affected the most intimate social relation—that of the sexes.

Authors such as Otto Weininger gravely opposed women’s equality. He and other authors saw women as having a lower sexually defined nature and that their intervention in the public sphere would cause harm to society. Early Austrian feminists such as Rosa Mayreder, Irma von Troll-Borostyȧni, and Grete Meisel-Hess (who studied in Vienna) strongly resisted this misogynist and essentialist point of view and proclaimed gender roles as a social construct.

However, Agatha Schwartz (2005) pointed out that during this period, there were feminists who equally held essentialist assumptions about superior feminine qualities which complement masculine qualities to justify women's inclusion in politics. Some, in fact, would go further to regard masculinity as the evil of the world.

This heated debate at the turn of the century reflected how the rapid changes in the economy, political life, culture, and values have created confusion and anxiety that affected the most intimate social relation—that of the sexes. Feminism was eventually ousted by the sexual anxieties that had emerged. Ultimately, tolerance and progressiveness in Vienna quickly turned to supremacist values. 

Vienna 1900 (Pinterest.com)

The End of Liberalism

Alongside the swift advancement of the 19^th century, Vienna had been facing pressing issues as immigrants crowded the city and the workforce. Inevitably, Vienna became a breeding ground for conservatism, nationalism, and anti-Semitism, which the coffeehouses and salons could no longer defend themselves from. The political struggles ended the liberal golden age. In 1897 the liberal powers in Vienna made way for the conservatives when Karl Lueger, a man admired by Adolf Hitler, became mayor.

In 1897, the Griensteidl café had to close down when buildings were being demolished, causing an outcry of its regulars. And it was not surprising that at the onset of the 20th century, the salons suffered a quite death. As the middle class grew weaker so did the salons, especially after the First World War. However, following the economic crises caused by the war, “Red Vienna” as it was called then, became the haven for workers’ power with policies favoring the working class.

A strong labor and feminist movement grew out of the social and economic crisis that came after the First World War. This had set the motion for radical changes in policies. By this time, Vienna was home to a large number of migrant laborers from various parts of the empire. To tackle the problem of housing, in the 1920s and 30s, the Viennese government implemented a social democratic housing model which provided apartments to the masses through a redistribution policy. Red Vienna also aimed to tackle healthcare, education, and child care issues. Architects designed housing to suit the needs of the workers, particularly to relieve the burden of women workers where the state is expected to take over reproductive tasks. 

“Red Vienna” as it was called then, became the haven for workers’ power with policies favoring the working class.

 

Facing economic issues and bourgeois resistance, the new socialist city was unable to stand against the conservative state. In 1934, Red Vienna crumbled under political and economic pressure of the conservative federal state. With this, Vienna enters a chapter of authoritarian government rule under the Austrofascist government, crippling the feminist movement. With the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938, Vienna succumbed to fascist rule which led to the exodus of the Jewish population living in Vienna, the population which had played an important role in the development of the city and culture. The rest—the concentration camps, the food crisis, and Austria's long awaited independence in 1955—is World War II history. 

Myth or Fact?

Today, Vienna's coffeehouses still have their distinct atmosphere. They are reminiscent of Vienna's glory days where the intellectuals, free thinkers, and artists roam the city. One cannot speak of coffeehouses without mentioning Vienna, a city so famous for the history of its coffee culture that its coffeehouse tradition has been declared national heritage by UNESCO. Aside from bearing cultural significance, these coffeehouses tell the story of the political turbulence of the past—the political defeats that tore the dignity of the city, the country, and its people. 
 

Nevertheless, there have been criticisms of the coffeehouses being overly glorified and even the view that there is more myth than fact surrounding the history of Vienna’s coffeehouses. Well, even based on facts, one can choose to believe what one wants to believe. Myth or not, Vienna’s traditional coffeehouses have become inseparable from the city’s history. They are a gentle reminder that history tends to repeat itself.

Sources

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Schwartz, Agatha (2005) ‘Austrian Fin-de-Siècle Gender Heteroglossia: The Dialogism of Misogyny, Feminism, and Viriphobia.’ German Studies Review, Vol. 28, No. 2 (May), pp. 347-366 [online] <http://www.jstor.org/stable/30038153> [11 April].

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Weinzierl, Erika. (2003). The Jewish Middle Class in Vienna in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries. University of Minnesota, Center for Austrian Studies. Retrieved from the University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy [online] <http://hdl.handle.net/11299/60664> [8 April 2018].

Wilhelmy-Dollinger, Petra (2009) ‘Berlin Salons: Late Eighteenth to Early Twentieth Century.’ Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. Jewish Women's Archive [online] <https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/berlin-salons-late-eighteenth-to-early-twentieth-century> [18 April 2018].

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