US_127 The Central-European Coffee-bar

Faculty of Arts
Spring 2011
Extent and Intensity
2/0. 3 credit(s). Type of Completion: k (colloquium).
Teacher(s)
Mgr. Miroslav Jeřábek, Ph.D. (lecturer), PhDr. Aleš Filip, Ph.D. (deputy)
Guaranteed by
Mgr. Kristýna Celhofferová, Ph.D.
Department of Musicology – Faculty of Arts
Contact Person: Vlasta Taranzová
Timetable
Mon 17:30–19:05 N21
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is also offered to the students of the fields other than those the course is directly associated with.
The capacity limit for the course is 160 student(s).
Current registration and enrolment status: enrolled: 0/160, only registered: 0/160, only registered with preference (fields directly associated with the programme): 0/160
fields of study / plans the course is directly associated with
Course objectives
The aim of this lecture cycle will be to make the students familiar with the tradition of coffee drinking and with the café culture in the geografical area of Central Europe. The lectures will be structured in such a way as to make the students more familiar with social, cultural and political history of central Europe in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. Up to the mid-twentieth century, the culture of coffe drinking was a peculiar phenomenon within the Central European city culture. After the communist take-over, coffee shops in former Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary (as well in Balkan countries) were pushed out of public life. The last twenty years have witnessed a complicated and not entirely successful revival of the café life.
Syllabus
  • 1) History of coffee growing. Origins of coffee drinking tradition in the European setting. Coffee as a drink of aristocrats and burgesses. 2) The first Central European coffee shops. Turkish coffee - heritage of the nation of conquerors. Origins of cafés in Viena and Brno. The term of a tavern. 3)Carbonari, Polish and Greek revolutionaries of the 1820s and 1830s. Lord Byron. Did Sylvio Pellico drink coffee at the Špilberk castle? 4) Biedermeier and café. Central European conservative burgess society versus rebels and revolutionaries. Prague coffee shops and bars in the revolution year of 1848. Josef Václav Frič - a revolutionary or also a coffe connoisseur? Frič´s fateul Prague and Parisian cafés. 5) Café and (central) European modernism. Renowned artistic coffee shops around 1900 in Paris, Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Brno, Krakow and Lvov. 6) Functionalist architecture, architects and coffee shops. Cold elegance of functionalist cafés. Brno - the capital of modern Central European architecture? 7) The crazy and happy 1920s - a history of one big illusion. Coffee shops as a common part of lifestyle. Cinemas, cabarets, jazz, radio, sport, camping and the café society. 8) Café as place of asylum. (Not only) intellectuals on the run. The phenomenom of Central European emigration after 1933, 1934 and 1938: German and Austrian emigrants in Prague and Brno. Reflection of Central European emigration in European literature. 9) Closing down cafés after 1948. Coffee-shop owner as a class enemy. Sweatpant culture of the 1950s. Anděl na dovolené, Anděl na horách and Anděl in a café? 10)Cafés, writers and literary magazines of the 1960s. Depiction of a coffee shop in European visual arts. Brno cafés Bellevue as a symbol of the period. 11) Café as a dissident of the time? Beer culture of the 1970s and 1980s in the Czechoslovak Republic versus the coffee-shop minority. Lifestyle of the Czechoslovak society at the time of Gustáv Husák and era of Karel Gott, Ivan Lendl and JZD Slušovice. 12) Café as an object of privatization and restitution. Difficult renewal of coffee-shop culture after 1990. 13) Café Brno. City and coffee shops in the passage of time. Presentation of a 60-minute documentary (ČT Brno 2008).
Literature
  • Karel Bartz: Karbonáři na Špilberku. Brno 1935.
  • Silvio Pellico: Má vězení. Praha 1926.
  • Josef Václav Frič: Paměti. Praha 1957.
  • Otakar Nový: Ohňostroj pražských barů a lokálů. Praha 1995.
  • Leni Reiner: Kavárna nad Prahou. Praha 2001.
  • Josef Kroutvor: Města a ostrovy. Praha 2002.
  • Karel Altman, Lenka Kudělková, Vladimír Filip: Zmizelý svět brněnských kaváren. Brno 2008.
  • Karel Altman: Krčemné Brno. Brno 1993.
  • Jiří Knapík: Únor a kultura: sovětizace české kultury 1948-1950. Praha 2004.
  • Miroslav Jeřábek: Společenský život brněnských kaváren v prvních desetiletích 20. století. In: Brno v minulosti a dnes. Brno 2005.
  • Týž: Zmizelý a současný svět brněnských kaváren. In: Rozrazil, č.5/2008.
Teaching methods
Lectures and class discussion.
Assessment methods
Essay writing based on presented topics.
Language of instruction
Czech
Further Comments
Study Materials
The course is taught only once.
The course is also listed under the following terms Spring 2010, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2016, Spring 2018, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022.
  • Enrolment Statistics (Spring 2011, recent)
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