Women at the Tables of Empire
‘She enters a small room. It's filled with people, mostly men, with the occasional woman, but always accompanied. Everyone is dressed according to middle-class norms. No woman is alone. Yet, she boldly takes a seat. A strong, healthy woman approaches her, greets her, asks a question, and then brings her dinner.’
In the autobiographical novel Stone on the Road (Kamen na cesti) published in 1938, Zagreb journalist, author, and women’s rights activist Marija Jurić Zagorka expresses the unease of a woman alone in a restaurant, coffeehouse, or pub.
Mirjana, Zagorka’s alter ego, is turned away from an ‘elegant guesthouse where she used to eat in childhood with her mother,’ with the brief explanation: ‘Sorry, we do not serve unaccompanied misses.’ Next establishment, next attempt. An attentive innkeeper reseats Mirjana away from ‘men who are measuring you up’, yet the bohemian intellectuals and artists greet her with the same ‘crudish laughter’. ‘Why couldn’t a woman come here with honest intentions? Why do the people who should defend women from prejudice think like this?,’ Mirjana asks, hurrying to leave. At home, she downplays the discomfort: ‘I’m so unbearable(…). They have been drinking a bit. It’s nothing, nothing.’
Around 1900, when Mirjana’s experiences took place, Zagreb was on the southern semiperiphery of the Habsburg Empire. The Empire would be swept into the dustbin of history in the aftermath of the First World War, replaced by a Yugoslav monarchy, but nothing gave this away during the Belle Époque. Zagreb was brimming with Vienna-style coffeehouses and hearty carb-heavy Austro-Hungarian cuisine.
Today, each time I want to sit alone in a restaurant or a bar, I must overcome myself. My shying away from strangers is partly to blame. The rest of the unease stems from centuries of women’s scrutinised, limited, and shunned participation in the public sphere. I am trying to undo it with self-talk: ‘No one cares; you can take up space even if you are a party of one, and it’s unfeminist to think otherwise. You have the right to be there; no one has the right to bother you. You don’t have to make small talk if you don’t wish to; chewing and gulping are nothing to worry about.’
After finishing a PhD on mass housing in socialist Yugoslavia and playing the role of a hipster housewife in my spare time – sourdoughing, indulging in modern lunchbox art for my daughter, brewing vegetable stocks – I needed to leave home and understand how women entered the public sphere in order to find the same bravery. I started my research in Zagreb, Croatia’s capital, where I frequented cafés as a teenager, navigating the 2000s chic of coffee lounges and mainstream alternative rock bars that taught me the meaning of the phrase ‘sticky floors’. Soon I embraced the perfect socialist invention of the caffe bar – a versatile, nonchalant space that combines morning coffee and evening drinks under one roof. My happiness peaked on rainy autumn afternoons in the basement of a jazz café, highlighting my assigned reading in art history and literature, and daydreaming about my forthcoming adult life in bright, bold colors. An anxious tingle of a table for one met with silent triumph. I recognised myself in Mirjana’s unease, but I also recognised myself in other accounts of women from that period, with flickers of solidarity, pleasure, romance, and career opportunities.
Going through the literature on Vienna’s coffeehouses, I passed through a creamy cloud of whipped allure: a biotope of the public sphere, politics, art, and witty encounters. Women visitors, however, were burdened with conditions. Daytime was safer than night. The terrace – open to supervision – was deemed more appropriate than the interior; the one in Daruvar, a small town 130km east of Zagreb, was brimming with women and children. Lower classes entered public spaces before aristocracy: in the nineteenth century, peasant women in search of refreshment after a market day in Zagreb were a common occurrence.
In the autobiographical novel Stone on the Road (Kamen na cesti) published in 1938, Zagreb journalist, author, and women’s rights activist Marija Jurić Zagorka expresses the unease of a woman alone in a restaurant, coffeehouse, or pub.
Mirjana, Zagorka’s alter ego, is turned away from an ‘elegant guesthouse where she used to eat in childhood with her mother,’ with the brief explanation: ‘Sorry, we do not serve unaccompanied misses.’ Next establishment, next attempt. An attentive innkeeper reseats Mirjana away from ‘men who are measuring you up’, yet the bohemian intellectuals and artists greet her with the same ‘crudish laughter’. ‘Why couldn’t a woman come here with honest intentions? Why do the people who should defend women from prejudice think like this?,’ Mirjana asks, hurrying to leave. At home, she downplays the discomfort: ‘I’m so unbearable(…). They have been drinking a bit. It’s nothing, nothing.’
Around 1900, when Mirjana’s experiences took place, Zagreb was on the southern semiperiphery of the Habsburg Empire. The Empire would be swept into the dustbin of history in the aftermath of the First World War, replaced by a Yugoslav monarchy, but nothing gave this away during the Belle Époque. Zagreb was brimming with Vienna-style coffeehouses and hearty carb-heavy Austro-Hungarian cuisine.
Today, each time I want to sit alone in a restaurant or a bar, I must overcome myself. My shying away from strangers is partly to blame. The rest of the unease stems from centuries of women’s scrutinised, limited, and shunned participation in the public sphere. I am trying to undo it with self-talk: ‘No one cares; you can take up space even if you are a party of one, and it’s unfeminist to think otherwise. You have the right to be there; no one has the right to bother you. You don’t have to make small talk if you don’t wish to; chewing and gulping are nothing to worry about.’
After finishing a PhD on mass housing in socialist Yugoslavia and playing the role of a hipster housewife in my spare time – sourdoughing, indulging in modern lunchbox art for my daughter, brewing vegetable stocks – I needed to leave home and understand how women entered the public sphere in order to find the same bravery. I started my research in Zagreb, Croatia’s capital, where I frequented cafés as a teenager, navigating the 2000s chic of coffee lounges and mainstream alternative rock bars that taught me the meaning of the phrase ‘sticky floors’. Soon I embraced the perfect socialist invention of the caffe bar – a versatile, nonchalant space that combines morning coffee and evening drinks under one roof. My happiness peaked on rainy autumn afternoons in the basement of a jazz café, highlighting my assigned reading in art history and literature, and daydreaming about my forthcoming adult life in bright, bold colors. An anxious tingle of a table for one met with silent triumph. I recognised myself in Mirjana’s unease, but I also recognised myself in other accounts of women from that period, with flickers of solidarity, pleasure, romance, and career opportunities.
Going through the literature on Vienna’s coffeehouses, I passed through a creamy cloud of whipped allure: a biotope of the public sphere, politics, art, and witty encounters. Women visitors, however, were burdened with conditions. Daytime was safer than night. The terrace – open to supervision – was deemed more appropriate than the interior; the one in Daruvar, a small town 130km east of Zagreb, was brimming with women and children. Lower classes entered public spaces before aristocracy: in the nineteenth century, peasant women in search of refreshment after a market day in Zagreb were a common occurrence.
Daruvar coffeehouse in the park, Museum of Arts and Crafts Zagreb.
While the idealisation of coffeehouses is frustrating, remaining in an oppositional stance focused solely on historical wrongs, would not feel sufficient. Instead, I chose to search for fragments of women’s presence, however sparse or inconclusive they might be. As ‘feminist killjoy’ Sara Ahmed writes in Complaint!, ‘a fragment is a sharp piece of something.’ The spiky glimpse of insight compensates for incompleteness. I started to highlight those who I read as women based on gendered naming and fashion conventions. It felt meaningful to acknowledge their existence, and to put them in the spotlight, even if there was little to find beyond a blurred head or a name on a list.
The 1912 postcard of Velebit, Gospić – ‘the first modern coffeehouse in Lika’, named after a nearby mountain massif – is my favorite. Located between Zagreb and the Adriatic Sea, Gospić, with just over 35,000 inhabitants in 1910, was the center of the Lika region. This mountainous, sparsely populated area had for centuries been part of the Military Frontier, which the Habsburgs intended as a buffer against the Ottoman Empire until the Frontier’s abolition in 1881.
Here, ‘modern’ denotes a Viennese spatial model: a high-ceilinged, L-shaped room with a billiard table and marble tables for small parties. Two waiters on the left are positioned to circulate between the tables. The man on the right might be the owner, while the girl and the woman behind him appear to be members of his family. At the junction of the two rooms stands the counter, with a cashier positioned behind it. In this typology, the counter figured as a device of immobilisation and coverage, limiting sexualised interaction with guests. At the time, the conflation of waitressing and sex work was pervasive, serving as a central argument for organised waiters opposing the employment of waitresses. Autobiographical accounts such as those of Annelise Rüegg, a Swiss communist waitress and globetrotter, are the rarest exception; most writing about waitresses is a sexualised literary fantasy. Literary scholar Katherine Mullin identifies in the figure of the barmaid a distinctly modern ambivalence between ‘pitiful victims of exploitation’ and ‘sirens – tricksy, mercurial, and dangerous.’
Yet there is more to this figure. She appears the most at ease with being photographed, her joy anchoring the image. She self-consciously touches her face in a gesture I can easily imagine making myself.
My search for women proved most fruitful in the realm of employers. Unlike organised waiters in Zagreb, who were intent on gatekeeping the occupation, the trade association of Zagreb employers welcomed women. In 1904, their periodical Gostioničarski viestnik (Innkeeepers’ Gazette) listed women within this status group (coffeehouse, hotel, and pub owners, among others). Women were invited to join the association and have their rights protected. This openness stemmed from the logic of labour organisation. Food and drink establishments were often run as family businesses, and widows frequently assumed control after their husbands’ death. My curiosity is drawn to two widows on the list and the way the abbreviation ‘ud.’ (udova – widow) occupies the place of their first names.
Julijana Lazičić placed a series of advertisements around 1910. Proudly identifying herself as a woman coffeehouse owner (kavanarka), she promoted Kačić, her ‘newly refurbished coffeehouse according to the most modern standards’, describing it as a meeting place for both locals and foreigners. She highlighted typical coffeehouse offerings at the time: all newspapers, billiards, and other games. As a business, the coffeehouse occupied a middle-class position. Historian Ines Sabotič notes the spatialisation of class: lower-class drinking establishments (krčme) were kept outside the city center. Requirements such as displaying the owner’s name on the exterior served as a guarantee of accountability. In this context, the photograph of Lazičić – a stately, respectable matron – functions as a verification of ‘solid service, always under the supervision of the owner.’ Lazičić appears confident in enforcing her authority among her employees.
The 1912 postcard of Velebit, Gospić – ‘the first modern coffeehouse in Lika’, named after a nearby mountain massif – is my favorite. Located between Zagreb and the Adriatic Sea, Gospić, with just over 35,000 inhabitants in 1910, was the center of the Lika region. This mountainous, sparsely populated area had for centuries been part of the Military Frontier, which the Habsburgs intended as a buffer against the Ottoman Empire until the Frontier’s abolition in 1881.
Here, ‘modern’ denotes a Viennese spatial model: a high-ceilinged, L-shaped room with a billiard table and marble tables for small parties. Two waiters on the left are positioned to circulate between the tables. The man on the right might be the owner, while the girl and the woman behind him appear to be members of his family. At the junction of the two rooms stands the counter, with a cashier positioned behind it. In this typology, the counter figured as a device of immobilisation and coverage, limiting sexualised interaction with guests. At the time, the conflation of waitressing and sex work was pervasive, serving as a central argument for organised waiters opposing the employment of waitresses. Autobiographical accounts such as those of Annelise Rüegg, a Swiss communist waitress and globetrotter, are the rarest exception; most writing about waitresses is a sexualised literary fantasy. Literary scholar Katherine Mullin identifies in the figure of the barmaid a distinctly modern ambivalence between ‘pitiful victims of exploitation’ and ‘sirens – tricksy, mercurial, and dangerous.’
Yet there is more to this figure. She appears the most at ease with being photographed, her joy anchoring the image. She self-consciously touches her face in a gesture I can easily imagine making myself.
My search for women proved most fruitful in the realm of employers. Unlike organised waiters in Zagreb, who were intent on gatekeeping the occupation, the trade association of Zagreb employers welcomed women. In 1904, their periodical Gostioničarski viestnik (Innkeeepers’ Gazette) listed women within this status group (coffeehouse, hotel, and pub owners, among others). Women were invited to join the association and have their rights protected. This openness stemmed from the logic of labour organisation. Food and drink establishments were often run as family businesses, and widows frequently assumed control after their husbands’ death. My curiosity is drawn to two widows on the list and the way the abbreviation ‘ud.’ (udova – widow) occupies the place of their first names.
Julijana Lazičić placed a series of advertisements around 1910. Proudly identifying herself as a woman coffeehouse owner (kavanarka), she promoted Kačić, her ‘newly refurbished coffeehouse according to the most modern standards’, describing it as a meeting place for both locals and foreigners. She highlighted typical coffeehouse offerings at the time: all newspapers, billiards, and other games. As a business, the coffeehouse occupied a middle-class position. Historian Ines Sabotič notes the spatialisation of class: lower-class drinking establishments (krčme) were kept outside the city center. Requirements such as displaying the owner’s name on the exterior served as a guarantee of accountability. In this context, the photograph of Lazičić – a stately, respectable matron – functions as a verification of ‘solid service, always under the supervision of the owner.’ Lazičić appears confident in enforcing her authority among her employees.
Gostioničarski list, December 24, 1910, 6. National and University Library in Zagreb.
Coffeehouse Medulić was a notable gathering place of artists and intellectuals. In 1917, its owner Darinka Belošević placed an advertisement for her establishment. Though sparsely worded, listing only her name and address, it employed eye-catching photography to attract attention and help visitors locate the coffeehouse. The ad appeared in the Women’s Gazette, possibly signaling that the time was ripe for women to visit coffeehouses in greater numbers, as many men were away on the frontlines.
The First World War reshaped gendered patterns of movement in public space. Sitting in coffeespaces as customers, standing behind the counter, or working in the back rooms, women carved out a place for themselves in public life.
In the same period, some reenacted coffee scenes in photo studios, alone or together with other women. In my research, I entered a whole new realm of vague coffeespaces. These could be domestic gatherings, perfectly socially acceptable for women at the time, but the act of being photographed outside the home, and creating a photograph as a keepsake with an unpredictable destiny, opens the scene to public scrutiny. They could be a fiction of a café space without distractions. They could express orientalist fantasies in metropolitan Budapest or nod to local Ottoman traditions in post-Ottoman Sarajevo. While some photographs delightfully expose the constructed nature of the studio set, others produce a luscious impression of affluent women indulging in leisure. The seriality feels distinctly modern. Just as the same coffeehouse table is occupied by different groups during the day, different women in the same setting, captured by the modern technologies of reproduction, fit into an emerging mass culture and society.
My social media adolescence is built on snapshots of coffeetables: a magnificent chain in Leipzig where I am nervously preparing for a job interview; a window seat in Brighton where I manage my public speaking anxiety before my conference talk; an indulgent break in Berlin at a pricey third-wave coffee shop after receiving my first full time job salary. Some of these photos are obnoxious; me cosplaying cultural capital and first-generation class aspirations. Some are touchingly distorted by then popular filters.
Before today’s hotel breakfast, I tended to dismiss them. While pondering how to write this, I sat alone at the smallest available table, inconveniently placed in the middle of the room. A glance over my coffee and book met ten men (yes, I counted them), a familiar gender imbalance I have noticed over the past few years of frequent business travel. Men who move naturally in such spaces are quick to occupy a table for four alone. Not being afraid of being cringe, I took a photo of my coffee, book, and breakfast, cropping them all out, leaving only space for myself, manipulating context to create something meaningful to me: an odd keepsake, a reminder that I was there.
The First World War reshaped gendered patterns of movement in public space. Sitting in coffeespaces as customers, standing behind the counter, or working in the back rooms, women carved out a place for themselves in public life.
In the same period, some reenacted coffee scenes in photo studios, alone or together with other women. In my research, I entered a whole new realm of vague coffeespaces. These could be domestic gatherings, perfectly socially acceptable for women at the time, but the act of being photographed outside the home, and creating a photograph as a keepsake with an unpredictable destiny, opens the scene to public scrutiny. They could be a fiction of a café space without distractions. They could express orientalist fantasies in metropolitan Budapest or nod to local Ottoman traditions in post-Ottoman Sarajevo. While some photographs delightfully expose the constructed nature of the studio set, others produce a luscious impression of affluent women indulging in leisure. The seriality feels distinctly modern. Just as the same coffeehouse table is occupied by different groups during the day, different women in the same setting, captured by the modern technologies of reproduction, fit into an emerging mass culture and society.
My social media adolescence is built on snapshots of coffeetables: a magnificent chain in Leipzig where I am nervously preparing for a job interview; a window seat in Brighton where I manage my public speaking anxiety before my conference talk; an indulgent break in Berlin at a pricey third-wave coffee shop after receiving my first full time job salary. Some of these photos are obnoxious; me cosplaying cultural capital and first-generation class aspirations. Some are touchingly distorted by then popular filters.
Before today’s hotel breakfast, I tended to dismiss them. While pondering how to write this, I sat alone at the smallest available table, inconveniently placed in the middle of the room. A glance over my coffee and book met ten men (yes, I counted them), a familiar gender imbalance I have noticed over the past few years of frequent business travel. Men who move naturally in such spaces are quick to occupy a table for four alone. Not being afraid of being cringe, I took a photo of my coffee, book, and breakfast, cropping them all out, leaving only space for myself, manipulating context to create something meaningful to me: an odd keepsake, a reminder that I was there.