At the Café Arco
- 28. März
- 2 Min. Lesezeit
In autumn 1907, Josef Suchánek from Reichenberg [Liberec] opened a café near the then Prague State Railway Station. Although the Arco soon became the haunt of major artists including Max Švabinský, Bohuslav Kubišta and Friedrich Feigl, it is better known as the coffeehouse favoured by Prague’s German and Jewish writers. Willy Haas, Paul Kornfeld, Hans and Franz Janowitz, Rudolf Fuchs and Otto Pick all socialised here. Ernst Weiß, Kurt Tucholsky and Alfred Kubin buried themselves in the Arco’s newspapers, while Johannes Urzidil set his story Eine Schreckensnacht [A Night of Terror], part of his 1956 collection Die verlorene Geliebte [The Lost Lover], at the café. Anton Kuh, one of the Prague literati, described the Arco as a “meteorological test station for German art and literature” on the grounds that you could “take a precise reading from the Café ‘Arco’ barometer and determine when
Christian pantheism would begin its dominance, when Expressionism would follow on the heels of Impressionism, and which new movement would build momentum.” Viennese critic Karl Kraus, publisher and sole sharp-penned author at the literary magazine Die Fackel [The Torch], on the other hand, mocked the men of letters at the Arco, dubbing them the “Arconauts”.
Before the onset of his lung disease, Franz Kafka was also part of a loose literary circle at the Arco; here, he first made the acquaintance of Czech journalist Milena Jesenská.
My dear Max – How about coming right to the ‘Arco’ for a little while, not for long, God forbid, just as a favour to me, you know; Př. [Příbram] is there. Please ma’am, please Mr Brod, be so kind as to let Max go.
Franz Kafka to Max Brod
Changeable feeling surrounded by the young people at the Café Arco.
Franz Kafka, entry in the diary (25 February 1912)
