Coffee: The Epic of a Commodity (9 page)

Thus, built upon coffee, milk, crescents, and doughnuts, was established the first Viennese coffee-house—the mother of huge dynasties, offshoots, and crossings.

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the then usual channels of world trade, large supplies of coffee were continually being brought to Vienna, entering the southeastern portal of the empire. For a long time, however, no effect upon Germany was noticeable.

The soldiers of the allied contingents that had saved the imperial capital from destruction did not take any coffee with them on their return home. If, for instance, coffee had at that time been brought to Dresden, we should learn of the fact from Hasche, historian to that town, who records that three days after the defeat of the Turkish army that had invested Vienna—on September 16, 1683, that is to say—a thanksgiving festival was held in Dresden. On October 1, behind the Dresden arsenal, a public exhibition of the war-booty was held. “There were shown five Turkish tents of multicoloured cotton, tied by cotton ribbons, very costly articles; also six heavy guns. There was likewise an elephant, which, however, caught a chill, and soon died; numerous camels, as well, to which the climate was unsuitable, so that they did not live long. In addition to many rare manuscripts, there was an ancient copy of the Koran, the sacred book of the Arabs, beautifully inscribed upon silk paper and illuminated.” Had there been any coffee, we cannot doubt that Hasche would have mentioned the fact. The returning Saxon soldiers had not brought any.

Thus, to begin with, it could not be said that the opening of Kolshitsky’s coffee-house had an effect in Germany, though, no doubt, there was general talk along the Danube about the way in which the Viennese had taken to drinking coffee. Still, since even the Viennese were slow to adopt the new beverage, we cannot be surprised that the South German States proved tardy in the matter. The use spread up the Danube, for, three years later, in 1686, the first coffee-house was opened in Ratisbon. Then a jump was made northward, to Nürnberg. Here a halt was called, and it was a long time before coffee made any further advance.

Like every other commodity, coffee is subject to the law of supply and demand. Was there, at that date, an effective supply of coffee? The original Viennese stock was a prize of war, and not for a long time did it occur to anyone to import fresh quantities through the devastated lands of Hungary, Serbia, and Bulgaria. Apart from the fact that, after the Battle of Vienna, the Turkish war continued (for the emperor’s armies invaded the Balkans, and had repeated brushes with those of the sultan), land transport of Oriental goods would—the distances being so great—have made them too expensive for German consumption. As far as High Germany and Central Germany were concerned, only marine transport by way of Venice was possible. The position of Venice as against Turkey was peculiar. When the Turks occupied the territories of southeastern Europe, they came everywhere in conflict with the Venetians, who traded along the coasts of Greece and in the Archipelago. Commerce was the only sort of life for Venice. In that city there was no land where grain could be grown or beasts pastured. The citizens of the republic lived in their crowded houses amid the lagoons and canals or on ships that spent most of the time at sea. Nevertheless, though war between the Venetians and Turks went on for hundreds of years, this conflict never completely interrupted trade between them. At a time when the land routes between East and West, between Vienna and Constantinople, were closed by war or the imminence of war, maritime commerce still went on between the Queen of the Adriatic and Morea, Asia Minor, and Egypt. It continued because, religious and political enmity notwithstanding, it was of vital importance both to the Crescent and the Cross.

True, it was the Venetians who engaged in the fiercest sea-fights with the Turks. On the other hand, it was likely enough that, shortly before, one adversary had supplied the other with the timber out of which the ships had been built! The spirit of Mars and the spirit of Mercury were perpetually intermingled. The supple diplomatist was the offspring of the embraces of warrior and merchant.

King John Sobieski, leader of the Polish-German army at the relief of Vienna, 1683

Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor

Franz Georg Kolshitsky receiving the dispatches

Franz Georg Kolshitsky as a spy in Turkish dress

Cartoon of a Parisian coffee-seller at the time of Damame’s monopoly (1695)

Woman coffee-seller (about 1730)

Allegorical cartoon of Tea and Coffee (about 1720)

Anti-Bacchic Parisian engraving (about 1720)

Thus Venice drew profit continually from the Southeast. But the Venetians, seafaring folk, had little or no inclination to carry on their trade by land routes northward and westward into Europe.

It was strange that the city republic, which morning after morning stared undazzled at the sun as it rose in the East, that the city republic, whose fleet sailed towards all quarters of the compass, shunned the mountains. For the Venetians, the Alps were a psychological barrier, and they shrank from any attempt to scale the heights. It would have been easy enough, otherwise, for them to send their traders by land to Villach, Klagenfurt, over the Tauern, to Salzburg and into Bavaria. Instead of this, they left commerce by land to the Germans, though the latter were, in most respects, far less enterprising. Like the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the British, they were seafarers; and without a thought of carrying their goods by foot over the passes of the Alps, as time went on, they sent them boldly in Venetian bottoms as far as Flanders.

It was not that trade by land routes through Germany ran any special risk. No doubt pillage and blackmail occurred from time to time in Germany, but on the whole the trade routes of the empire were carefully policed. Still, after the Thirty Years War, a sort of public cheating had become widespread in Germany. There was prevalent a “fraud without shedding of blood,” of which Guidobaldus, bishop of Ratisbon, complained when, in 1668, he wrote: “It was common for traders fraudulently to dispose of the goods with which they had been entrusted.” The bishop charged the estates of the realm to search out these fraudulent traders and inflict condign punishment.