«Bildung, Gesittung und weißes Tischzeug»: i caffè di Czernowitz tra Otto e Novecento

Between the 19th and the 20th century, Czernowitz, the capital of the Bukowina district of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, experienced all the ferment of a Central European metropolis, where it was above all the Jewish component of the population that absorbed the weight of Austro-German culture. Thanks to the Jewish contribution, Czernowitz forever shed its provincial character and took on all the grandeur and nobility of a Provinzmetropole, where a wealthy Jewish bourgeoisie, self-confident and self-satisfied, sought and found opportunities for socialising and recreation, crowding the most prominent places in the city, eagerly going to the theatre, going in and out of the various grand hotels, passing by the Café de l’Europe and the Café Habsburg. During the years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but also until the Second World War, Czernowitz was a city of coffee houses, and the Austrian cafés, like those in Vienna, and perhaps even more so than in Vienna, were an extension of the offices and private homes, where the customers spent a good part of the day and where they encountered all the discourse that animated the public sphere. Not only the décor, the bourgeois sharpness and unscrupulousness in business, but all the cultural instances, especially those that dotted the Jewish diorama, found a sounding board in the Bukovinian cafés, especially in Czernowitz. The article aims to explore and describe the reality of Czernowitz cafés as catalysts, accelerators and disseminators of political, social, economic and cultural dynamics.