The "Young Vienna" Circle

     The fine strapping team of coffeehouse literati including Peter Altenberg, Alfred Polgar, and Karl Kraus (who despised the circle as much as he was apart of it) marked the face of turn of the century literature with their terse and acerbic styles, and virtually became the face of the Viennese coffeehouse scene. In World of Yesterday, Zweig described "In our own city there appeared overnight the group known as "Young Vienna...in whom the specific Austrian culture, through refinement of all artistic means, had for the first time found European expression."

     The common disdain felt towards bourgeois culture and the liberal-minded desire to see positive societal change marked a common passion amongst the school of writers even when gossip of one another was the spice of their lives and work.  The notion of change and its ever relentless push for progress equally pushed forward the expanse of human knowledge and overall dominance, particularly in the field of technology. The nature of the coffeehouse atmosphere, as well as the essence of the role of the writer as life's notetaker allowed the circle to virtually take a time out in order to just watch and observe the manner inwhich society and culture was responding to the inevitability of modernity. More, their collection of literature captured the end of the of splendors of the Hapsburg empire as they ruminated on the escalating signs of a monarchial society in decay.