Café Hawelka
The small, smoke-dark coffeehouse that became postwar Vienna’s literary living room — run for decades by Leopold and Josefine Hawelka, and still serving her Buchteln late at night.
At a glance
Café Hawelka is a small coffeehouse in the Dorotheergasse, in Vienna’s Innere Stadt. Less grand than the Ringstraße cafés, it earned its fame through its people: for half a century it was the meeting place of the city’s artists and writers, presided over by its founders, and it is still run by the same family.
History
Leopold Hawelka, born in 1911, had already run the Café Alt Wien with his wife Josefine when, in May 1939, the couple took over the run-down Café Karl in the Dorotheergasse and gave it their name. The premises had opened in 1913 as the Chatham Bar, Vienna’s first American bar. War forced the new café to close within months.
When the Hawelkas returned in 1945 they found their coffee house had survived without a single broken pane, though the buildings around it were in ruins, and they reopened it that December. Its hospitality made it the postwar haunt of young artists and writers — Friedrich Torberg, Heimito von Doderer, the poet H.C. Artmann, the actor Helmut Qualtinger, later André Heller and the conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt. When the rival Café Herrenhof closed in 1961, its literary circle moved here, and visitors from Elias Canetti to Andy Warhol followed.
What you see
The interior is deliberately unchanged: red banquettes worn smooth, marble tables, nicotine-darkened walls hung with posters and drawings left by the artists who drank here.
The house specialty is Josefine Hawelka’s Buchteln — sweet baked dumplings served in the evening, still made to her recipe by the family.
Cultural significance
Hawelka proved that a coffeehouse is made by its regulars, not its chandeliers. For the generation of Fantastic Realism and postwar Viennese letters it was headquarters, and its survival — same family, same rooms, same recipe — makes it a living piece of twentieth-century Vienna.
Key facts
- Founded: May 1939, by Leopold and Josefine Hawelka, in the former Chatham Bar (1913)
- Reopened: December 1945, having survived the war intact
- Regulars: Torberg, Doderer, H.C. Artmann, Qualtinger, André Heller, Harnoncourt
- Specialty: Josefine’s Buchteln, still baked by the family
- Location: Dorotheergasse, Innere Stadt, Vienna
Practical information & getting there
The café is on the Dorotheergasse, off the Graben. Nearest U-Bahn: Stephansplatz (lines U1, U3). Open daily; the Buchteln are traditionally served from the evening.
Sources & resources
- Café Leopold Hawelka — History: hawelka.at/en/cafe/history
- Café Hawelka — Leopold & Josefine: hawelka.at/en/cafe/leopold-josefine
- Visiting Vienna — Café Hawelka
- Vienna Insider — Café Leopold Hawelka
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