VIENNA'S CAFÉ LOUVRE

IN THE 1920s & 1930s:

Meeting Place for

Foreign Correspondents

By Dan Durning
February 2012
(Version 1.0)
 VIENNA'S CAFÉ LOUVRE IN THE '20s & '30s:
The Meeting Place for International Correspondents

By Dan Durning
February 2012

Down in Vienna, before the Nazis acidized the pearl of European culture,
there was a little place not far from the Ringstrasse known as the Café
Louvre. It was simple and unpretentious, although its head-waiter, Gustav,
could produce marvelous schnitzel for a mere two marks. But the important
point about the Louvre is that the fact-seeking customer, by dropping in at
any time after 11 p.m. could obtain gratis an up-to-the-minute bulletin on
Balkan affairs. (Joseph H. Baird. Wine, Diplomats and News. The Sunday
Morning Star [Wilmington, Delaware], May 10, 1942, p. 2.

Introduction

If you were an American or British correspondent in Vienna during the latter years
of the 1920s or during the 1930s, you likely spent many of your late afternoons and
at least some of your evenings at the Café Louvre. There, you sat at a reserved
table—a Stammtisch—over which Robert Best, correspondent for the United Press
news agency, presided, and exchanged the latest news and gossip. Others at the
table included a mixture of fellow correspondents, paid news tipsters, and others
hired to help you with your reporting. Also, on any given night, the table had an
array of visiting journalists; political refugees, each with their own causes; famous
writers, composers, and artists; local and visiting intellectuals; and, sometimes,
spies.

Café Louvre played an essential role in the news gathering work of foreign
journalists in Vienna, and it also enriched the social lives of the journalists and their
families. Similar to the Hotel Adlon and its bar in Berlin, Café Louvre was a place to
pal around with colleagues, to meet news sources, to gather intelligence, and to
cultivate the personal relationships essential to success as an international
correspondent.

The frequent visits to the Café Louvre helped the journalists with a daunting job
that required reporting news from a huge area that encompassed the many
countries in Central Europe and the Balkans. The only way they could cover such a
large territory was with the help of good contacts, local news services, tipsters, and
other journalists doing the same job. John Gunther, writing in 1935 about his work
as a foreign correspondent in Vienna, explained:

[T]he basis of journalism in Europe is friendship...News gathering in Europe

is largely a collaboration whereby men who know and trust one another
exchange gossip, background, and information." [Gunther 1935, p.202]

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In Vienna, at the time Gunther wrote his about his job, Café Louvre was the place
where much of the news gathering took place.

Coffee Houses in Vienna

It is not surprising that coffee houses played an important role in the lives of
foreign journalists in Vienna. They had been woven into the social fabric of Vienna's
society during the Hapsburg Empire, and they became even more essential to the
lives of Viennese after World War I.

Louis Fischer, an American journalist who lived in Vienna in the early 1920s.
explained the attraction of coffee houses for Viennese in the difficult years following
WW I by telling the story of an impoverished professor of English literature whose
small two-room apartment was "cold and dark." To escape those conditions, the
professor went every night at 8 pm to a café. According to Fischer:

The café was large and roomy and its upholstered seats were soft. Professor
Ottwald had his own table, marble-covered like all the rest, and nobody else
used it. Friends knew they could find him there from eight to eleven-fifteen.
It was his Stammtisch [a table reserved for regular customers]. His waiter
approached, addressed him cordially by name, chatted for a moment, and
went off to bring him a cup of coffee and two glasses of water on a metal
tray. Another employee in special uniform came over and handed him the
Frankfurter Zeitung, published in Germany. After a while, the same
employee, having observed that the professor had turned to the last page of
the Frankfurter silently laid the London Times on the cool slab." [Fischer
1946, p.19]

More than a decade later, in the 1930s, the Viennese coffee house still offered the
same amenities and held the same attraction.

For Gunther, who reported from Vienna for the Chicago Daily News, and most
other Anglo-American journalists, the coffee houses were essential to their daily
labor. Gunther's work routine included a visit at about eleven a.m. to the Café
Imperial where he meet with a group of friends—mostly journalists and locals
selling new tips—for a discussion of the latest news and rumors, then he spent time
in the afternoons at Café Louvre. He wrote:

The coffee house is, of course, the inner soul of Vienna, the essential
embodiment of the spirit of the town. It is, as everyone knows, much more
than just a place to drink coffee in. Coffee you may have, in literally forty
different varies, but you have also literature, conversation, and peace of soul
and mind. And in the Café Imperial, in the morning, and in the more modest
Café Louvre, in the afternoon, you get journalism, Viennese-brand. [Gunther
1935, p.201]

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In short, as Frederick Scheu [1972, pp.20-21], a Viennese who wrote for British
newspapers in the 1930s, explained, for the price of a cup of coffee journalists
received a nice drink, a temporary office they could use—without hassle—for as
long as they wanted, and free access to the newspapers of Vienna and the world. In
regard to free newspapers, Gunther [1935, p.104] noted that the Café Imperial had
about 20 Viennese newspapers and between 40 and 50 foreign newspapers, and
"for the price of a drink you may sit all day and read the lot."

Café Louvre: Vienna's Coffee House for Foreign Journalists

One interesting feature of Vienna's coffee houses was that a particular Vienna
coffee house often became the main meeting place or hang out for a specific type
of clientele. In the early 1920s, for example, Fischer [1946, p.20] observed:

The café in Vienna was home and political arena. Certain cafés were
frequented by Socialists and no Monarchist would enter them. The
Monarchists had their own cafés. Other cafés whose high prices kept ordinary
mortals out attracted currency speculators. In still other coffee houses long-
haired poets and "left-wing prostitutes" abounded.

In the 1930s, according to different writers, coffee houses still had their special
clientele. For example, the Café Imperial—where Gunther met his colleagues each
day—was a place where Balkan spies and revolutionaries hung out; Café Pucher
was a café popular with Austrian politicians; Café Central, on Herrengasse, was a
meeting place for émigré intellectuals; Café Museum was a place for artists and
architects; and Café Rebhuhn (near St. Stephens) was a café frequented by
Austrian journalists and commentators. [See Björkman-Goldsmith 2007, p.122;
Shirer 1952, p.52-53; Cuthbertson 1992, p.104]

Although British and American journalists

Vienna's Cafe Imperial in 1920
might go to many different cafés in the
course of their work, often to meet with
diplomats, politicians, bureaucrats, and
shady characters who could help them find
and write news, Café Louvre became the
main coffee house of foreign journalists.
Scheu [1972, p.20] called it the "market
exchange for international news" ["Das Café
Louvre war die Börse für
Auslandsnachrichten."]

How well did the Anglo-American journalists adapt to the ways of the traditional
Viennese coffee house? Apparently pretty well. Else Björkman-Goldsmith, in her
book recalling life in Vienna, wrote about its coffee houses in the 1930s, noting the
role of Café Louvre as the hangout for foreign journalists. She wrote, "There [at
Café Louvre] the old Vienna coffee-house traditions had to be defended against the
attacks of people from other countries." She wrote that over time the foreigners

3
were "eingewienert," meaning roughly that they were turned into Viennese.
[Björkman-Goldsmith 2007, p.122]

Café Louvre was located in Vienna's inner city (1st

district) at the corner of Wipplingerstrasse and
Renngasse, a couple of blocks from the Austrian Stock
Exchange Building (Börse) and the Ring. It was steps
away from two establishments important for foreign
correspondents. The first was the Central Telegraph
Building, which was open 24 hours a day and had a
special room for journalists. From this building,
telegrams could be sent to locations throughout the
world. The second was Radio Austria, which
transmitted telegrams by airwaves to locations in
Europe.

During the 1920s, these two offices were essential in

2011 Picture of the K.K.
Telegrafen-Central (The
the work of American foreign correspondents who
Central Telegraph Building) sent most of their news stories by telegram. They
on Wipplingerstrasse. could send urgent news directly to the United States
at the Central Telegraph Building. This type of
communication was expensive. Alternatively, they could send their stories more
cheaply by way of a telegram (via radio signal) to a central location in Europe, and
that office transmitted the story to the U.S. By the 1930s, American journalists
were often sending their news stories by telephone, a practice that became
increasingly more popular as time passed. [Scheu 1972, p.21)

Café Louvre was a comfortable, but not

grand, coffee house. Ken Cuthbertson,
Gunther's biographer, described it like this:

The interior was typical. It was

spacious, with about forty marble-
topped tables and violin-backed chairs
in the center of the high-ceilinged
room. Along one wall were booths,
finished in dark brocades. Along
another were a buffet of snacks and
pastries and some rattan racks holding
the day's newspapers.... [Cuthbertson
1992, p.108]
A picture of Cafe Louvre from Der
Before foreign journalists made Café Louvre Spiegel, January 29, 1968, p. 90.
their place, it gained some fame as the
meeting place for Viennese Zionists. It was at the Louvre that Theodore Herzl, the
founder of the Zionist movement, came to an agreement in 1896 to start publishing
the Welt newspaper, an organ of the Zionists. Also, for many months that year, the
fledgling Zionist movement held monthly meetings at the café; the group moved

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elsewhere when attendance grew too large for the space in the café. A copyrighted
picture of an early Zionist meeting in 1896, held in a small alcove at the Café
Louvre, can be found at this location: http://www.gettyimages.co.nz/detail/news-
photo/theodor-herzl-and-viennes-zionists-in-the-cafe-louvre-news-photo/56456465

The Café Louvre's role as a meeting place for foreign journalists came about largely
because Robert Best adopted the café as his work place. According to Scheu [1972
p.19], there was a legend in the early 30s that after Best had arrived in Vienna he
had taken a seat at the Café Louvre in 1923 and from then on had never again
stood up. According Cuthbertson,

It was here that Bob Best presided at his Stammtisch, the reserved table that
was his home away from home. No one would ever have bothered trying to
contact him at his apartment or office; he could be found at the Café Louvre
day or night." [Cuthbertson 1992, p.108]

Best, a South Carolinian born in April 1896, earned BA and MA degrees from
Wofford College, located near his hometown of Spartenburg. After serving in the
U.S. Army during World War I. He got a journalism degree from Columbia
University in 1922, and was awarded a Pulitzer Travelling Scholarship for ten
months of study in Europe. He arrived in Vienna near the end of December, 1922,
and settled there. [Edwards 1982, p.73-74]

Best was hired as a stringer for United Press in May, 1923. Because he was paid per
article, rather than receiving a salary, he constantly had financial difficulties. To
supplement his income, he started a news service that provided journalists with
daily information about events in the Balkans and Central Europe. Also, for $5 per
day, he filled in for correspondents when they were traveling outside of Vienna or
were on vacation. [Cuthbertson 1992, p.297] Scheu described Best's news service:

One of the press services to which foreign journalist subscribed was

"Amepress" operated by Laszlos Benes (a refugee from Hungary) and his
wife, with the assistance of Robert Best. Journalists did not subscribe to this
service mainly for the news it provided, but because Benes, his wife, Robert
Best, or one of their representatives was at Café Louvre from morning to late
night and they would contact journalists by phone if there was breaking
news. Also, journalists would call them at Café Louvre if they were away
from home and wanted to find out if anything important was happening.
[Scheu 1972, p.21; my translation]

Edwards [1982, p.75] painted a colorful picture of Best at work:

Best cut a flamboyant figure at his reserved table in the Café Louvre. A
broad-brimmed Stetson capped his 220-pound frame, and his high-laced
shoes and wretched German were familiar to other habitués of Ringstrasse.

While Café Louvre was a center for international news gathering during the day, at
night it took on a different character. According to Cuthbertson, in the evenings it

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became a family social center as well as place to exchange gossip and information.
The number and types of guests at the Stammtisch were astonishing. He wrote:

The coffee house took on a different atmosphere after dark, when it became
a family social center. The married correspondents often brought their wives
and children. Whit Burnett, who became a regular at the Café Louvre,
recalled in his memoirs how at Bob Best's Stammtisch there was not a night
that the regular table did not seat, along with the regulars, visiting
playwrights, novelists, poets, short story writers, even spies." [Cuthbertson
1992, p.108]

Also, Café Louvre frequently hosted foreign journalists who were passing through
the city. According to Scheu [1972, p.26-27], every couple of days, famous
journalists would show up at Café Louvre, including Charles Knickerbocker, Edgar
Mowrer, Dorothy Thompson, and Fritz Kuh.

An American journalist, Joseph Baird, who spent many nights at Café Louvre
described some of the people he met there this way:

[The fact-seeking visitor] would find there on any night, sipping coffee or
brandy, a representative cross-section of Austrian, Hungarian, Czech,
Bulgarian, Turkish, British, American, French and Russian diplomats and
journalists. True, they dealt largely in the false currency of rumors. You
heard all sorts of preposterous nonsense. Yet, from the welter of information
and misinformation, the honest correspondent, by carefully checking, could
gain more real facts that he could hope to gather from months of questioning
European foreign ministers." [Baird 1942, p.2]

Journalist Emlyn Williams, reminiscing in the Christian Science Monitor about his
time in Vienna during the 1930s, wrote about the political refugees who came to
the Café Louvre:

Among regular visitors to the Café Louvre Stammtisch were political refugees
from many countries -- Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Serb, Croad, and Bulgar.

Some of them still retained their idealism. They hoped to find sympatric men
of the press who would sponsor their causes. But most of these refugees had
become disillusioned. They were looking for work of any sort. They had to
exist. Some became regular informants for particular newspaper and
agencies. They could quickly supply interpretative background to the latest
reports from anywhere in their part of Europe. The correspondents naturally
had to sift the chaff from the grain -- the real historical facts form the
strongly biased propaganda. [Williams 1964, p. 2]

Scheu, recalling the evenings at Café Louvre, wrote: "Best...sat in a padded loge,
with a view of Renngasse, that was reserved for him." In addition to the foreign
journalists in Vienna around him, Best also "assembled a large number of refugees,
hangers on, news tipsters, spies -- serious, but questionable people, who sat at his

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table and populated the surrounding tables at Café Louvre....People who came from
abroad were astounded by what they saw at Café Louvre." [Scheu 1972, p.20]

the Café Louvre Circle and the Anglo-American Press Association

In 1930, the journalists representing American and British newspapers and press
services did what most other groups in Austria do: they organized to form an
association to further their interests. On June 24, 1930, the Anglo-American Press
Association (AAPA) became a legal organization. According to Scheu, "The driving
force behind the creation [of the Association] were, in addition to Best, M.W. Fodor,
the correspondent of the Manchester Guardian, as well as G.E.R. Gedye,
correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph and John Gunther a gigantic blond
young American, who a few months after my entrance into the Café-Louvre Circle
came to Vienna to represent the Chicago Daily News, a newspaper with
interested in international issues." [Scheu 1972, p.23]

As the creator and manager of the operational center of the Café Louvre Circle
(those journalists who were regulars at Café Louvre), Robert Best was one of the
leaders of the AAPA. The other journalist chiefly responsible for its creation was
M.W. Fodor, who was at the intellectual center of the Circle. Fodor was the dean of
foreign correspondents in Vienna, first reporting from Budapest and Vienna in 1919
for the Guardian. He stayed there, a correspondent for the Guardian and different
American newspapers, until he had to flee the Nazis when they marched into
Vienna on March 12 1938. Fodor was widely acknowledged as the man most
knowledgeable about the history and current events of Central Europe and the
Balkans. For a biographical sketch of Fodor, go to this link:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/65502558/Marcel-W-Fodor-Foreign-Correspondent

Fodor was Hungarian by birth. Educated as an engineer, he worked at a steel mill in

England before World War I. During the war, he was interned there as an enemy
alien, then when the war ended he got a job as the Central Europe correspondent
for the Manchester Guardian. Among his attributes were an expansive memory,
analytical skills, and the ability to speak several European
languages.

Fodor was known as someone who freely shared his vast

knowledge of the Central Europe and the Balkans. American
journalist William Shirer wrote of him, "I have never known a
man, and especially a journalist, who gave so much of himself
and his knowledge to others." [Shirer 1985, p.21] Also, Fodor
mentored younger foreign journalists in Vienna. For example, he
helped Dorothy Thompson as she was beginning her meteoric rise
as a international correspondent in the early 1920s. He was also
M.W. Fodor in a mentor to John Gunther during his years in Vienna.
1939

Fodor was a Café Louvre regular, usually joined by his wife, Martha. They spent
many evenings at Best's table with colleagues and an assortment of visitors. A

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jaundiced, but revealing, picture of Fodor was provided by Carl Flick-Steger, who
had been the Central European correspondent for the Hearst Press and Universal
News Service. Flick-Steger was a Nazi sympathizer. In the early part of World War
II, he worked in press relations for the Germany army. Soon after that, he operated
a pro-German radio station in Shanghai. While there in 1943, he wrote the
following about a 1934 visit to Vienna:

At the Café Louvre, Vienna's "Adlon Bar," I had a date that afternoon [in
1934] with one-eyed Bill Shirer, the Chicago Tribune's Vienna
Correspondent. It was the customary Café Louvre afternoon séance with
crystal-gazer Janos Fedor [sic] presiding. Others present were Gunther,
Panton, and Gedye. Fedor [sic] was a clever analytically-minded Hungarian
Jew, shaggy haired and with an austere air that at first glance commanded
respect. When he parted his lips to speak, a hush came over his circle of
followers, who absorbed his words as if coming from an oracle. Fedor [sic] is
credited with having supplied most of the raw material for John Gunther's
Inside Europe. [Flick-Steger 1943, pp.405-406]

Among those who found their way to Café Louvre was 23-year-old J.W. Fulbright,
who in the middle of 1928 had finished two years of study at Oxford University.
After a summer tour of Europe, he decided to spend some months in Vienna. In a
short while, he found the Café Louvre group and started joining in the
conversations there. Though he was about fifteen years younger than Fodor, they
became friends. Fodor invited Fulbright to join him on his annual reporting trip in
Spring, 1929, to the Balkans, which he did; however Fulbright had to cut short the
trip when he became ill. [Woods 1995, p.36]

In a 1987 interview with Cuthbertson [1992, p.106], Fulbright recalled his time in
Vienna and his visits to Café Louvre:

You could find a group of journalists there most evening. I remember hearing
Fodor hold forth, and he and I became friends. Fodor was a short stocky man
with a mustache, and it was obvious that he was very intelligent; he spoke
with great authority on an astounding range of subjects.

Elsewhere, for one of his biographers, Fulbright described—with some

exaggeration—the important role of Fodor at the coffee house:

The correspondents would sit around there in the Café Louvre, 10 and 11
o'clock at night...and old Fodor would tell them what had happened that day.
They'd talk to Fodor for over an hour, and they'd all write it down and then
send it off at the telegraph office across the street. I remember people would
come in there for The New York Times and other papers, big papers in the
U.S. and have a long conversation with Fodor. About two weeks later, I'd
read it all in The New York Times Magazine. [Johnson and Gwertzman
1968, pp.30-31

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In the late 1920s and early1930s, Fodor reported from Vienna not only for the
Guardian but also for the Philadelphia Inquirer and New York Daily News.
From 1936 until he left Europe at the start of World War II, he was a correspondent
for the Chicago Daily News. In addition to his newspaper reporting, Fodor wrote
about political events in the region for several journals, including American
Mercury, The Nation, and Harper's Magazine. He wrote two well-reviewed
books in the last part of the 1930s, Plot and Counterplot (1937 and republished
in 1939 with a few updates with the title South of Hitler) and The Revolution is
On (1940).

Another journalist instrumental in setting up the AAPA, George Eric Rowe Gedye,
was not a regular at Café Louvre, but usually attended the lunches and meetings of
the Association. [Reunion 1945, on-line] Gedye—who had been a British intelligence
officer during World War I—started reporting from Vienna in 1927 for the Daily
Express, a populist British paper. Later, in the 1930s, he was hired as a
correspondent for the New York Times.

In a 1945 article about Gedye's return to Vienna, Time magazine described him as
follows:

Oldtime Vienna correspondents knew sharp-featured George Eric Rowe

Gedye (rhymes with steady) as a cool little Englishman, always reserved and
distantly polite, who could write with startling passion of his love (Austria)
and his hate (the Nazis)....

As a Vienna correspondent, Gedye was a lone wolf. He steered clear of the

Café Louvre, where...mutually admiring members of the Anglo-American
press club...talked away the days over Kaffee mit Schlagobers, and pooled
their findings. He drifted around the country, wrote excellent travel and
history books on Austria. [Reunion 1945, on-line]

Evidence of Gedye's passion for Vienna and dislike for the

Nazis can be found in his book Betrayal in Central Europe
(published in Britain as Fallen Bastions). The book is about
major events in Austria from 1927 until his expulsion three
days after the Anschluss. It is impressive not only for its fluid
prose, but also his strong opinions and anger. The book
includes a vivid and chilling account of the events he
witnessed during the few days before and after the Germans
invaded Austria on March 12, 1938.

G.E.R. Gedye (see Although Gedye was not a Café Louvre regular, he did go
Sources Cited for the there occasionally and in late 1933 and early 1934 he made
link to this picture)
the acquaintance of a Englishman—a recent Cambridge
University graduate—who had often been sitting at Best's Stammtisch since his
arrival in Vienna. Soon after a brief, but bloody, civil war in Austria ended in
February 1934, this man made an urgent visit to Gedye's apartment. According to

9
Gedye, he "demanded a suit of clothes to enable a wounded Socialist to get out of
the country." When he saw that Gedye had seven suits in his closet, he insisted on
getting six of them to help "wounded friends in the sewers in danger of the
gallows." [Gedye 1939, p.104]

Gedye described this episode in Betrayal in Central Europe. What Gedye did not
know at the time he wrote this account was that this Englishman, Kim Philby, had
been working as a courier for the Comintern underground in Vienna. His work in
Vienna was his first assignment as a spy for the Soviet Union, and it started him on
an infamous career in which he attained a high-level position in British intelligence
while being a member of the "Cambridge Five" spy ring. [Cookridge 1968, p.88]

The fourth person instrumental in the creation of the AAPA was John Gunther, who
had arrived in Vienna only a few months before its creation. He quickly made his
mark in Vienna as the correspondent for the Chicago Daily News. Also, he, more
than any other journalist, documented the life of a foreign correspondent in Vienna
during the first half of the 1930s. His book, The Lost City, is a roman á clef about
a journalist (closely resembling Gunther) in Vienna in the early 1930s, his
colleagues, and their work and lives. The book was completed in late 1937, but was
not published then because, according to Cuthbertson [1992, p.264], lawyers who
reviewed it thought it was libelous. The book was first published in 1964.

Gunther's wife, Frances, also wrote a fictionalized account of an episode in an

American journalist's life in Vienna. Her short story was published in 1937 in Story
magazine. It is about a Christmas party given in Vienna by a foreign journalist and
his wife (who closely resembled the Gunthers). The story introduced readers to the
couple—who clearly had some conflicts—and to colleagues who attended the party.
It highlighted some aspects of the uneasy personal lives of foreign journalists in
Vienna at the time, and the tension among them

John Gunther was an ambitious, energetic, enthusiastic,

likeable, and highly social man. Though hired to report daily
news, he—as he himself freely admitted—was not a hard
news guy, but he excelled at writing feature stories with a
human element. [Gunther 1962, p.4] He and his wife
entertained often and had expensive tastes. To help pay for
their lifestyle, Gunther regularly wrote free-lance stories for
several popular magazines in the United States, including the
Atlantic, The New Republic, Vanity Fair, and Harper's..

While in Vienna, Gunther worked closely with Fodor, whom he

called a mentor. Together they broke some important news
stories. One of their scoops came when they went together to
John and Frances interview Hitler's remaining relatives in Austria. The stories
Gunther in 1929, Just they wrote based on those interviews did not please Hitler.
Before Their Arrival
in Vienna
In 1935, Gunther left Vienna to report from London. Soon
after that, he started writing a book that provided an

10
overview of the leaders and politics of major European countries. He titled the 1936
book, Inside Europe, and it was quickly a best seller. In the following years, he
wrote a series of "inside" books that made him one of the most famous journalists
in the world.

Aside from these four men who were instrumental in creating the AAPA, the
founding members of the Association, according to Scheu [1972, p.24], included:

John Banister Daily Mail

Robert Berry Associated Press
Whit Burnett New York Sun
Heinrich Diez New York Herald Tribute
John MacCormac New York Times
Hugo Neuman The Times
Friedrich Scheu London's Daily Herald
William Shirer Chicago Tribune
Pembroke Stephens Daily Express
Alfred Tyrnauer International News Service
J. Emlyn Williams Christian Science Monitor

Soon after the AAPA was founded, O.E. Warner soon replaced Robert Berry
reporting for AP. In 1931, the following journalists were added as members

L.H. Eisenmann Reuters

Martha Foley Consolidated Press (U.S.)
Adolf Lippe Exchange Telegraph press service
Emil Maass Chicago Tribune
Emil Vadnay New York Times

Among those who were most active in the AAPA and in the Café-Louvre Circle (in
addition to Best, Fodor, and Gunther) were Alfred Tyrnauer (International News
Service) and Emil Vadnay (New York Times), who came to Café Louvre almost
every day. Tyrnauer was an Austrian citizen. Vadnay, according to Scheu [1972, p.
25, 26], was a "tall and broad shouldered" man born in Hungary; he had "a scar on
his throat from an injury that occurred during World War I."

The activities of the AAPA included a monthly meeting at which a visitor was invited
to speak. The first meeting was held in August or September 1930, and they
continued until the Anschluss. According to Scheu [1972, p. 25], speakers were
often local political and governmental leaders. For example, Chancellor Engelbert
Dollfuss and Heimwehr leader Emil Fey spoke to the group. Other times speakers
were local celebrities, such as composer Franz Lehár, or famous people passing
through the city, such as Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, the founder of the pan-
Europe movement, and William Bullitt, a famous American diplomat.

Sometimes the members of AAPA united to assist members who were being
mistreated by the Austria government. For example, Gedye mentions in his book,
Betrayal in Central Europe, that in 1934 the Austrian government, displeased

11
with his reporting, continually denied him access to the Austrian Radio studio
facilities he needed to participate in BBC discussions. In response, AAPA members
decided that all of them would boycott participating in radio shows as long as
Gedye was unable to participate. The boycott got the desired results, with Gedye
permitted to use the studio.

Probably the most important feature of the AAPA and the Café Louvre Circle was an
informal information-sharing agreement that helped the Anglo-American journalists
report all of the important news coming from the region. According to Scheu [1972,
p 21], this agreement established a kind of "cartel," and this cartel was created
without their boss's knowledge. Scheu wrote, "At Café Louvre, the guiding principle
was that one must share news with his colleagues. That meant that none of us was
in danger of not knowing important news that a colleague had uncovered."

As Scheu explained, correspondents agreed that any journalist who had an

"exclusive" story would have about an hour's advantage in reporting it. That way,
his or her newspaper had be able to run the story before its competitors. After an
hour, the owner of the "exclusive story" called Café Louvre. There a press service
person would take the news and pass it on by telephone to all of the others who
were part of the agreement. [Scheu 1972, p.22]

The Last Days of the Austria: A Small Drama at Café Louvre

The events of February and March 1938 were momentous and tragic for Austria.
Hitler was making demands for a union of Germany and Austria, and Austrian
Nazis, whose ranks were growing daily, were supporting these demands. The world
watched as the tensions rose, and the number of reporters in the city increased as
journalists came to Vienna from other locations to report on unfolding events.

Café Louvre was still the meeting place of

Anglo-American journalists, and rumors
flowed there about what was about to
happen. William Shirer, who had
reported from Vienna in the early thirties,
was back in the city to cover
developments for CBS news. He wrote in
his diary about the dramatic events of
March 11th, 1938, the day Austrian
Chancellor Schuschnigg resigned and the
day before the Germans troops entered
Austria.
German Soldiers Entering Austria, August
12, 1938 That day, Shirer had returned to Vienna
from a trip to Ljubljana, arriving at 8 am.
He went immediately to the Schwarzenberg Café, where he met with Fodor and Ed
Taylor of the Chicago Tribute to catch up on what had been happening. After
running around the city all day to witness what was happening, he heard an

12
announcement that a new Austrian government was being formed with Arthur
Seyss-Inquart at its head. Shirer headed to Radio Austria (RAVAG) to send a
telegram to update his news story, stopping at Café Louvre on the way. He
described the events there as follows:

Bob Best of United Press...was dispensing the latest rumors. Martha Fodor,
the beautiful Slovak Martha, was fighting to keep back the tears. This was
the end of her world. Fodor was not here. He had gone home to try to
telephone his story to London. John Wiley, she said, had already called
saying he was going to take them in the morning to Bratislava, across the
nearby frontier in Slovakia. So Fodor and his lovely wife would be safe.

My former assistant when I was the correspondent at the Chicago Tribute

in Vienna, one Emil Maass, swaggered in. He had been a rather mousey man
when he worked for me, a little retarded for his thirty years. He was half
American and half Austrian, and had two passports. He came up to Best's
table, where I was sitting with Martha and Major Goldschmidt, the
monarchist leader, and two or three others.

"Well, meine Damen and Herren," he smirked, "it is about time."

He turned over his coat lapel, unpinned his hidden swastika party button,
and ostentatiously pinned it on the outside over the buttonhole. Martha
shrieked, "shame" at him....

...

Major Goldschmidt, whom I had taken a liking to, though he was head of a
monarchist group working for the restoration of the Hapsburgs—a forlorn
cause—rose quietly from the table. He had had a Jewish father, but was a
practicing Catholic. Hitler, I thought would never forgive him either for his
racial mixture or his politics...

The major stood at the table for a moment.

"Thank you for your friendship," he said quietly, "even if you didn't like what
I was up to." He shook the hands of each of us around the table.

"You will please excuse me," he said. "I shall go home now and get my
revolver." (That night he shot and killed himself.) [Shirer 1985, pp.294-300]

The End of the Café Louvre

After the Germans marched into Austria, many of the regulars at Café Louvre left
Vienna. On March 12th, Fodor and his family, assisted by the American counsel,
fled by car to Bratislava. Scheu, an Austrian, departed about the same time. Gedye
was kicked out by the new Nazi government a few days after the Anschluss. Alfred

13
Tyrnauer of International News Service, an Austrian, was briefly jailed, as were
other Austrian journalists who worked for American or British newspapers. [Nazis
1938, p.8]

Other stayed on to report on events in Vienna, leaving the city as their work was
increasingly restricted. Among those who stayed was Robert Best, who kept his
place at the Café Louvre until the Nazi government closed it in 1940.

In fact, Best did not return to the United States until 1946 when he was transported
as a prisoner to face trial for treason. Best, following the Anschluss, had continued
reporting for United Press until 1941, when he was fired for "non-performance."
After Germany declared war on the U.S., he was incarcerated along with other
Americans who were on German soil. He was scheduled to return to the U.S. in
1942 as part of an exchange of enemy aliens by Germany and the US. However, he
refused to go. Instead, he volunteered to be a propagandist for the Germans,
making more than 300 broadcasts to the U.S. by radio. [Edwards 1982;
Cuthbertson 1992, p. 297]

Shirer, who had broken the story of Best's

broadcasts in 1942 and who was subpoenaed to
testify at his trial in 1948, was deeply puzzled by
his behavior—as were others who had been Best's
friends at Café Louvre. According to Shirer [1952,
p.54], Best "was well liked by other
correspondents, for whom he was never too busy
to do a good turn." He believed that Best's problem
was that he never returned—even for a short
visit—to the U.S. after arriving leaving it in 1922,
losing his attachment to the country.

Robert Best in 1946 after his

arrest for treason

Shirer [1952, pp. 54-55] wrote about Best:

Sometime after the Nazis came to Austria, he got the Nazi bug, and when
the war came and we got into it, he elected to stay behind to broadcast
Hitler's propaganda against his own land. In going Nazi he also went violently
anti-Semitic, which surprised his old colleagues, who knew that during most
of his long stay in Vienna his closest friend had been a Jew and who could
not recall Best ever having uttered a word against a Jew as a Jew.

When he went on the air in Berlin for Hitler, however, he tried to outdo his
master in his ranting against the Jews.

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Shirer wrote a novel called The Traitor (1950) in which the main characters were
journalists resembling Shirer and Best.

Best was convicted of treason in 1948 and sentenced to life in prison. His appeal
was rejected by a Federal District Court in 1950. He appealed his case to the U.S.
Supreme Court, which in 1951 refused to hear it. He died, while a prisoner, in
December 1952. [Edwards 1982]

Meanwhile, in late summer 1948, Gunther traveled to post-

War Vienna, finding it in lamentable condition. When he went
to re-visit Café Louvre, where he had spent so many
enjoyable hours, he found that the building that had housed
the café had been destroyed by a bomb. The structure had
been rebuilt, and a bank now occupied the space where Café
Louvre had been [Cuthbertson, 1992, p. 302].

A couple of years later, Shirer [1952, p. 55] also went back

to Vienna, going "one warm afternoon" to find Café Louvre.
Like Gunther, he instead found a bank in its old location.
Another journalist, William Stoneman, who had worked in
Vienna during the 1930s, returned in to Vienna 1953,
writing, "The Café Louvre—hangout of newspapermen in the
thirties—seems to have gone with the wind." [Stoneman
1953, p.1]

Today, the site where Café Louvre was located houses an upscale furniture store
selling couches, chairs, tables, and other furniture designed in Paris.

Corner of Wipplingerstrasse and Renngasse, April 2011

15
Sources Cited:

Alcalay, David. 1922. Warum Gingen Wir Zum Ersten Zionistenkongress.

Judisher Verlag (Berlin). Free e-book accessible at this link:
http://books.google.com/books/about/Warum_gingen_wir_zum_ersten_Zionistenko
n.html?id=R2BFAAAAYAAJ

Baird, Joseph H. 1942. Wine, Diplomats and News. The Sunday Morning Star
[Wilmington, Delaware], May 10, p. 2. (Accessed through Google newspapers)

Björkman-Goldsmith, Else. 2007. Es Geschah in Wien: Erinnerungen. Böhlen.

Cookridge, E. H. 1968. Mission im Hauptquartier. Der Spiegel, Nr. 5, Jan 29th pp.
88-98. Accessed at http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-45465073.html

Cuthbertson, Ken. 1992. Inside: The Biography of John Gunther. 1992. Bonus
Books.

Edwards, John Carver. 1982. Bob Best Considered: An Expatriate's Long Road to
Treason. North Dakota Quarterly, 50(1), Winter, pp. 73-90.

Fischer, Louis. 1946. Men and Politics: An Autobiography. Duell, Sloan and
Pearce.

Flick-Steger, Carl. 1943. The Adlon Bar Gang. XXth Century (Shanghai), vol. V,
Dec. pp, 398-407. Accessed at
http://libweb.hawaii.edu/libdept/russian/XX/PDF/61-Volume5.pdf

Fodor, M.W. 1937. Plot and Counterplot in Central Europe. Houghton Mifflin.

-----. 1939 South of Hitler. Houghton Mifflin.

-----. 1940. The Revolution is On. Houghton Mifflin.

Gunther, John. 1935. Dateline Vienna. Harper's Magazine. July, pp. 198-208.

-----. 1936. Inside Europe. Harpers.

------.1962. A Fragment of Autobiography: The Fun of Writing the Inside

Books. Harper & Row.

-----. 1964. The Lost City. Harper & Row.

Gunther, Frances. 1937. Another Year. Story, Vol. X, no. 54, January, pp. 74-85.

Johnson, Haynes and Bernard Gwertzman, 1968. Fulbright: The Dissenter.

Doubleday.

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Nazis in Vienna Hold 3 Newspaper Men. 1938. New York Times, March 17, p. 8.

Nittenberg, Joanna; Anton Pelinka; and Robert Wistrich. 1997. Wandlungen und
Brueche: Von Herzls "Welt" zu "Illustrierten Neuen Welt," 1897 to 1997.
Edition INW.

Reunion in Vienna. 1945. Time, September 10. Accessed at

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,776091,00.html

Scheu, Friedrich. 1972. Der Weg im Ungewisse: Osterreichs Schicksalskurve

1929-1938. Verlag Fritz Molden.

Shirer, William. 1941. Berlin Diary. Knopf.

------. 1951. The Traitor. Popular Library.

-----. 1952. Midcentury Journey. Farrar, Straus, and Young.

-----. 1984. 20th Century Journey: The Nightmare Years, 1930-1940. Little,
Brown.

-----. 1985. 20th Century Journey: The Start, 1904-1930. Bantam.

Stoneman, William. 1953. Glamorous Vienna Still Beauty Queen of Central Europe.
Toledo Blade, July 12,p. 1 (Accessed through Google newspapers)

Williams, J. Emlyn. 1964. Vienna Between Two wars. Christian Science Monitor,
Sept 23, p. 1,2 (Accessed through Google newspapers)

Woods, Randall. 1995. Fulbright: A Biography. Cambridge University Press.

Links to pictures:

Picture of Cafe Imperial (p.3)

http://www.karl-kraus.net/II.%20Der%20Fackel%20Lauf.htm

Gedye's picture (p. 9)

http://lesargotiers.wordpress.com/about-2/visual-art/classic-pipe-smoking-
photographs/ny-times-correspondent-ger-gedye/

German entry into Austria, March 12, 1938 (p. 12)

http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205193836

17