The Fall of the Dynasties: The Collapse of the Old Order: 1905-1922

by Edmond Taylor

In 1683 the city rendered a notable service to Christendom by withstanding a Turkish siege, which if it had been successful, would have opened all central Europe to infidel invasion. Vienna recalls the victory with modest pride, but in the collective memory of its citizens the really noteworthy event occurred after the Turks had withdrawn, when a quick-witted Polish mercenary picked up on the battlefield a sack of dark, aromatic beans, previously unknown in the West. A bronze plaque on the coffeehouse that the Pole founded still commemorates the occasion; from the exotic pleasure to which he introduced his adopted fellow countrymen, the Viennese have elaborated over the centuries an art of living and virtually a whole way of life. The coffeehouse culture that reached its apogee in Vienna before 1914 could flourish only in a peaceful world; to the Viennese, as to most other Europeans at the time,