Café Herrenhof

The Café Herrenhof was a coffeehouse in central Vienna, at number 10 Herrengasse, that opened in 1918 and became a meeting place for the city's writers. It closed in 1961, the same year the building that housed it was demolished.

History

After the First World War and the death of Peter Altenberg, many writers who had gathered at other cafés, such as the Central or the Museum, began to frequent the Herrenhof, where they tended to favour the inner room. Its heyday came in the 1920s.

Following Austria's annexation by Germany, the café was confiscated from its Jewish owner and Aryanized. At the end of the Second World War it briefly reopened under its former head waiter, Albert Kainz. After its final closure, the Café Hawelka took over as the literary gathering place.

Culture

Its regulars included writers such as Robert Musil, Joseph Roth, Franz Werfel, Hermann Broch and Friedrich Torberg, among others. Torberg evoked its atmosphere in his short story collection Die Tante Jolesch, a book of anecdotes about Viennese intellectual life. Today the café survives mainly in the literary memory of the city and in studies of its literary circles.