Viennese coffee and the legend of the Turkish coffee sacks of 1683

What does the legend of the Turkish sacks say?

The familiar version goes like this. In 1683 the Ottoman army lays siege to Vienna. A brave man slips through the enemy lines carrying messages. Once the danger has passed, that same man, Georg Franz Kolschitzky, helps himself to the Turks' sacks of coffee, opens the city's first coffee house and calls it the Blue Bottle (Zur blauen Flasche).

It has everything a good legend needs: a war, a hero, some plunder and a happy ending with a cup in hand. The trouble is, that's not how it happened.

Who was Kolschitzky, really?

He existed, and his part in the siege was real. He was a merchant who spoke Turkish and Wallachian and had worked as an interpreter: as a young man he'd served an imperial envoy in Constantinople. During the siege of 1683 he worked as a courier: between 13 and 17 August he made his way through the siege lines to meet Duke Charles of Lorraine, and then came back. That mission made his name. There were other couriers, but none of them became as famous.

What he got afterwards was a job, not a coffee house. In 1684 the court gave him a post as courier for Turkish affairs, on a fixed salary, and later an official lodging at the back of a house in Domgasse, a stone's throw from the cathedral. He died there in 1694 and was given a pauper's burial in the old cemetery around St Stephen's.

In 1983, on the three-hundredth anniversary of the siege, an association of Warsaw pastry cooks unveiled a plaque at number 8 Domgasse. It remembers him as a court courier and scout. In Polish, his surname is spelt Kulczycki.

Who opened Vienna's first coffee house?

An Armenian. Johannes Deodat, also known as Diodato, was born around 1640 in Istanbul and traded in Turkish goods in Vienna. On 17 January 1685 he was granted the right, for twenty years, to prepare the Turkish drinks: coffee, tea and sherbet. His house stood in the old Haarmarkt, which is now part of number 14 Rotenturmstrasse. That's where Vienna's first coffee house was.

He wasn't starting from scratch, either. Since 1645 the imperial treasury had been paying for coffee for Turkish envoys, as a matter of diplomatic courtesy towards the Ottomans. In other words, coffee was already doing the rounds at court almost forty years before the siege. There were other early coffee houses too, such as Isaac de Luca's. And Deodat went on to become patriarch of Vienna's Armenians.

His story has its ironies. In 1681 he'd applied, unsuccessfully, for a post as court courier for the East, much like the one Kolschitzky was given three years later. And his licence brought him lawsuits. When he became a citizen he refused to give it up, and he defended it until he won an appeal before the emperor in 1710. That kept him out of the guild. The upshot: the man behind Vienna's first coffee house never became a member of the coffee-house keepers' guild.

Where does the Kolschitzky legend come from?

From a book, and perhaps from a cup. According to the City of Vienna's online history encyclopaedia, the first person to spread it was a Piarist priest, Gottfried Uhlich, in a history of the second Turkish siege of Vienna published in 1783, a century after the events. Uhlich writes that Kolschitzky was rewarded for his courage with permission to open Vienna's first coffee house, and that he opened it "not far from St Stephen's". Later on, people said it had stood in a little lane by today's Stock-im-Eisen-Platz, in the building that came to be called the Blue Bottle.

And the cup? A study by the Austrian Academy of Sciences points to a broadsheet printed in 1683 that told the story of Kolschitzky's exploit, apparently in his own words. In it he says that, as he crossed the enemy camp, a Turkish aga called him into his tent and offered him the "Türkischen Chavve-Trunck", the Turkish coffee drink. Perhaps, the authors suggest, the legend grew out of that cup.

And the sacks? They're not in Uhlich. The version with the plunder, in which Kolschitzky asks for coffee beans from the enemy camp as his reward, turns up, according to the same study, in a pamphlet of 1885, the year of the statue. That's the earliest version we've found, which doesn't mean there isn't an older one.

There was more confusion besides, such as crediting him with a coffee house on the strength of a bare mention of a "Café Gewölb" in a 1701 register of houses: a free interpretation, according to the city's encyclopaedia. And the historian Karl Teply eventually disproved the whole legend.

One caveat, to be fair: a regional Austrian encyclopaedia counts Kolschitzky among the first people to hold a coffee licence. Even if that's so, the first documented licence isn't his, and there's still nothing to back up the Turkish sacks.

Why does he have a statue?

Because Vienna's coffee-house keepers adopted the legend as their own. Their guild's coat of arms carried Kolschitzky's portrait, with a coffee pot and cups. And a coffee-house owner, Franz Zwirina, paid for the statue that was unveiled on 12 September 1885 on Favoritenstrasse, in the fourth district. At Kolschitzky's feet, surrounded by Turkish trophies, there's a sack of coffee.

So Vienna ended up with a statue of a man for something that, according to historians, he never did. And what he did do, crossing a siege line with messages, was a good deal riskier than opening a coffee house.

What the Turks really left behind: cannons

The siege did leave some documented spoils, and they weren't coffee. The bronze from 180 Ottoman cannons captured in 1683 was used in 1711 to cast the old Pummerin, the great bell of St Stephen's Cathedral. It rang for the first time at the start of 1712.

And then came the Viennese coffee house

What began with Deodat's licence grew into an institution. In 1844 Heinrich Griensteidl, a pharmacist who never owned a pharmacy, founded a café that moved in 1847 to the corner of Herrengasse, with newspapers in every language. Writers frequented it so much that it earned the nickname "Café Größenwahn", the café of megalomania.

When it closed in 1897, because the building was about to be demolished, most of those writers moved to Café Central: newspapers in twenty-two languages, chess rooms and, some years later, a Russian regular who was fond of the chessboard, Leon Trotsky. The writer Alfred Polgar called it eine Weltanschauung, a whole way of seeing the world. Not a Turkish sack in sight.

Fact or legend?

• Fact: Kolschitzky, a merchant and interpreter, served as a courier during the siege of 1683; in 1684 he was given a post as court courier for Turkish affairs, and he died poor in 1694. The first licence to serve coffee in Vienna went to the Armenian Johannes Deodat on 17 January 1685, in his house on what is now Rotenturmstrasse 14. The court had been paying for coffee for Turkish envoys since 1645.
• Legend: that Kolschitzky opened Vienna's first coffee house with the Turks' sacks of coffee and called it the Blue Bottle. The coffee house as a reward first appears in a book of 1783; the coffee beans as plunder, in a pamphlet of 1885, the earliest version we've found. The historian Karl Teply disproved the legend.
• Possible origin: the cup of coffee that, by his own account of 1683, a Turkish aga offered him during his mission.
• Disputed: an Austrian encyclopaedia counts him among the first coffee licence holders. Even so, the first documented licence isn't his.

Where to hear it

Podtour tells this story on the route "Legends of Old Vienna", twelve stops that take you from the Anker Clock to the tree trunk full of nails. At the fourth, "Vienna's First Coffee House", you meet Deodat outside his old house. Further on, "Kolschitzky: A Real Spy with a Legendary Invention" takes you to Domgasse, where he lived and died. And the last stop, "The Tree Trunk Full of Nails", is heard close to where the legend put the coffee house.

Vienna's free route, "From the Cathedral to the Imperial Palace", tells the story of the cannon bell at "The Bell of a Hundred and Eighty Cannons" and of the writers' café at "The Café of Megalomania". Café Central brings the route "From Judenplatz to Café Central" to a close, at the stop "Café Central: Twenty-Two Languages and Mr Trotsky". And if you're planning your trip, our Vienna guide has the practical side covered.

Further reading

• City of Vienna, Wien Geschichte Wiki, "Kaffeehaus" (in German): https://www.geschichtewiki.wien.gv.at/Kaffeehaus
• City of Vienna, Wien Geschichte Wiki, "Johannes Deodat" (in German): https://www.geschichtewiki.wien.gv.at/Johannes_Deodat
• City of Vienna, Wien Geschichte Wiki, "Georg Franz Koltschitzky" (in German): https://www.geschichtewiki.wien.gv.at/Georg_Franz_Koltschitzky
• Austrian Academy of Sciences, Türkengedächtnis (J. Feichtinger, J. Heiss, M. Bogensberger), "Wien 4, Favoritenstraße/Kolschitzkygasse, Kolschitzky-Denkmal" (in German): https://www.oeaw.ac.at/tuerkengedaechtnis/denkmaeler/ort/favoritenstrasse-kolschitzkygasse-kolschitzky-denkmal
• City of Vienna, Wien Geschichte Wiki, "Café Griensteidl" (in German): https://www.geschichtewiki.wien.gv.at/Caf%C3%A9_Griensteidl
• City of Vienna, Wien Geschichte Wiki, "Café Central" (in German): https://www.geschichtewiki.wien.gv.at/Caf%C3%A9_Central