ORF, January 27, 2020
German original: https://wien.orf.at/stories/3031660
During the 1920s, the Cafe Palmhof, which used to be on Mariahilfer Strasse, was at the center of Viennese society and cultural life. Today, the cafe has vanished from the city’s memory. The Jewish Museum now resurrects its touching history.
The exhibition We Ask for a Dance. The Viennese Cafetier Otto Pollak (Wir Bitten zum Tanz. Der Wiener Cafetier Otto Pollak), shown at the Museum’s location at Dorotheergasse, processes the history of the once so popular cafe and its owner Otto Pollak and his family. According to the museum’s director, Danielle Spera, the establishment was “among the most successful institutions of its time,” as she explained during the presentation of the exhibit. Documents and objects from Otto Pollak’s estate, stored in boxes for decades, will be on display until June 1.
Room for Innovation
The Cafe Palmhof at Mariahilfer Strasse 135 in Vienna’s Rudolfsheim-Fünfhaus district was run by Otto Pollak and his brother Karl since 1919. They succeeded in repositioning the establishment and made it into a popular meeting spot. During the day it functioned as a coffee house, in the evening it hosted concerts, dances and society events, including the Miss Vienna contest, on a regular basis.
The cafe advanced to becoming a fixture in the lives of many guests: as a social gathering space, a living room, an office. Over the years, the Pollak brothers strived for innovation. The most fashionable architects of the day redecorated the rooms on a regular basis.
The brothers often travelled in search of talent so they could offer their guests new and outstanding artists. The performances of top bands even led to the radio broadcasting a live show once per week.
Bomb Attack and Aryanization
But anti-Semitism did not spare the cafe. In 1925, National Socialists attempted to storm the Palmhof, in 1934 a bomb attack occurred. Finally, in 1938, the business was aryanized and was given to a former waiter. The Pollak family was deported to Theresienstadt and other camps.
Only Otto, his daughter Helga and a cousin survived. The cafe and the apartment were restituted later, but Pollak declined to run the business again. The loss of his family and his experiences in the concentration camp prohibited it. Today a supermarket occupies the location of Cafe Palmhof.
In the extra room of the Jewish Museum, the history of the family and of the cafe are shown via personal artefacts. Those survived the horrors of the war because they were stored by an illegitimate daughter of Karl Pollak, who he fathered with a non-Jewish woman, explains curator Theresa Eckstein.
Photos Show a Carefree Time
Photographs of vacations, a wedding, and the cafe’s interior give witness to a formerly carefree time. There are personal dedications from well-known figures and musicians at the time, including Franz Lehar, Hans Moser, or Rene Dumont. China and menus from the Palmenhof have survived the decades as well. Life after 1938 is also documented touchingly.
For example, Otto Pollak penned a letter to his daughter as he had to leave his family apartment. The girl temporarily lived with relatives in the small Czech town of Gaya at that time. In addition, there is a calendar Otto used to take notes in Theresienstadt, documenting the inhumanity there.
After the war, Pollak was a different man. “He was a broken man,” explains Spera. He died on May 20, 1978 in Vienna. His daughter Helga, who goes by the last name of Kinsky since her marriage, has been active as a contemporary witness since the 1990s. “With this exhibition we wanted to call attention to what used to be and what is no more,” summarized curator Eckstein.