Dubrovic is very critical of the term “the Golden Tw enties” w hich have been attributed a rom antic aureole. The creative im petus, the new ideas that cam e sparkling forth in all areas of thought, arts and sciences, w hile adm irable, have to be seen against the dark background of the decay of the young civil rights era. The rise of Adolf Hitler sadly show s that the idealized interw ar era w as at the sam e tim e the incubation period for the second act of the European tragedy, the rule of a totalitarian regim e. 10 The tragic fate of the unforgettable Egon Friedell, fam ous Vienna w riter, historian, cabarettist, actor, and of course coffee house regular, exem plifies the consequences of that regim e for freedom of speech that had found its hom e in Vienna coffee houses. O n 16 March 1938, he jum ped to his death out of the w indow of his 3rd floor hom e in Gentzgasse to escape arrest by the Gestapo. “Watch out”, he shouted, as he fell, to a passer-by.
1 I ow e the inform ation for this part to a program m e by the Germ an public broadcaster ARD (Bayerischer Rundfunk) Skizzen aus dem O rient: Die Pforte der Glückseligkeit - das alte Istanbul. 2 cf. Sonja Fehrer, “Altenberg – Polgar – Friedell: Die Wiener Kaffeehausliteratur der Jahrhundertw ende”, Diplom arbeit zur Erlangung des Magistergrades (Vienna, 1992), 11. 3 Rolf Schneider, “Geselligkeit”, Leben in Wien (Munich and Vienna: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1994), 39. 4 As Stefan Zw eig very im pressively describes it in his autobiography Die Welt von Gestern: Erinnerungen eines Europäers, first published by Berm annFischer, Stockholm , 1944. 5 Astrid Pintar, “The English Coffee House as a Cultural Institution and Its Reflection in Literature”, Diplom arbeit zur Erlangung des Magistergrades (Vienna, 1993), 2. 6 Q uoted by Em den in The People and the Constitution (O xford, 1956), 33. 7 Pintar 34 and 76 8 cf. Pintar 2. 9 cf. Schneider 44 ff. 10 Milan Dubrovic, Veruntreute Geschichte: Die Wiener Salons und Literatencafés, Berlin: Aufbau Taschenbuch Verlag, 2001 110
N EWS FRO M
THE C O FFEE H O USE