Over the last three hundred years, coffee rose from being a rare luxury product to become the most important traded raw material in the world after crude oil. Even though coffee was drunk in the region of Salzburg in early times, nevertheless, the beverage has never before been chosen as a theme for a major presentation in the Salzburg Museum.
The exhibition deals with the public and private consumption of coffee. And the focus is on Salzburg. With coffee, tea and chocolate, all imported beverages of the modern age have been served in cafés. Coffee houses have constantly changed as social locations and adapted to people’s requirements. A café was rarely just a coffee house, but often also a meeting place for different social groups, and in the evening frequently used as a dance venue or wine inn. Just as the premises changed, so did drinking customs and with them the tableware that was used and the methods of preparing the beverage.
In the private sphere, at first only the rich middle class and bourgeoisie drank genuine bean coffee. The poorer social sectors of the population drank a great variety of coffee imitations or eked out bean coffee with added substances.
curators: Mag. Urd Vaelske und Dr. Christian Flandera
