Alone Together: The Patrons and Their Haunt
    

  The patron haunted his preferred coffeehouse in order to use the backdrop of his contemporaries' voices to hear his own. The air they breathed was a composition of hatred and envy, admiration and dependency of the essence of another artist sitting at the next table over. In his "Theory of Cafe Central," Alfred Polgar described the coffeehouse patron as "...people whose hostility to man is as great as their desire to be with people who want to be alone but need company to do so."  This sentiment was echoed by Karl Kraus in his  "Pro Domo Mondo," as he explained that "sitting alone at a table does not satisfy one's needs for solitude. There must be empty chairs sitting around. If the waiter moves away a chair that no one is sitting on, I feel a vacuum and it awakens my gregarious nature. I cannot live without my chairs."
        

  Founded in 1847 by Heinrich Griendsteidl, and located right beside the Hofburg, Cafe Griendsteidl evolved into the most definitive and first true literary mecca of the 1890s and the preferred cafe of the "Young Vienna" circle. From its origins, and it's advocation of revolutionary efforts,  it was also known as "cafe national". Throughout its existence, Griendsteidl remained a constant and a touchstone for its liberal literary clientele and a breeding ground for intellectual modernism as it continued to provide a space for an open exchange of ideas. 
    

When Griensteidl closed in 1897,  young Vienna migrated over Cafe Central, which in turn sourced the lifeblood of literary,  culture as Vienna made its transition into the 20th century. The cafe was a proportional to the size of the Viennese community and provided a vital breathing space to not only the literary groups, but to others as well. Helga Malmberg, a romantic associate of Peter Altenberg, observed  "Here were the reserved tables of the individual artists-- absolutely off limits to anyone else-- the chess players' island,. the oasis of the dominoes enthusiasts, the corner where people played billiards. All these sections with their onlookers and  kibitzers were separated from each other with a fair amount of space. Nobody disturbed anyone else." In addition to the literati hunks, some of the other regulars included Trotsky and Lenin, who, in the years just before the Russian Revolution, were noted as having met on a regular basis to play chess. In 1912, Alfred Adler was also frequented Cafe Central. The psychoanalyst who introduced the theory about inferiority complex found examples for his work found in life at coffeehouse.
   

  Adolf Loos, an architect who was also a regular at Cafe Central, received a commission in 1999 to design a cafe himself. His Cafe Museum, located right by the succession house, was a favored haunt of the avant-garde artists, such as Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele. A pioneer of modern architecture, the structure of Cafe Museum was a product of the strive for simplicity and function in form. In his design and true to the ideal of the modern Viennese architecture, he aimed to downplay the traditionally ornamental baroque style in his work.

The Entrance of Cafe Central