República do Café

The Café Hawelka in the 1st District of Vienna represents one of the
last great Central European traditions, that of coffeehouses of writers
and artists, or cafés littéraires, 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, his son Günter, and his
grandsons Amir and Michael Hawelka.

Leopold Hawelka

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 “Chatam” 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 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 Reed’s famous film “The Third Man” (1949),
based on a Graham Greene novel. Indeed the Casanova bar, featured
in the film, is next door to the Hawelka. 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.

Franz Hubmann - Café Hawelka 1956-57

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
Hawelka’s 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
Hawelka now established in most cafés in Austria. On the other walls
grew Herr Hawelka’s 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
only 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 Hawelka’s legendary Buchteln wafts
through the room.