Franciszek Jerzy Kulczycki

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Franciszek Jerzy Kulczycki of Sas Coat of Arms (1640-1694; his name often rendered Kolschitzky in German) was a Polish merchant of Ukrainian origin, spy, diplomat and soldier. According to popular legend, he opened the first café in Vienna in 1683, using coffee beans left by the retreating Ottoman Turks.

[edit] Biography

Kulczycki was born in 1640 in Kulczyce near Sambor, now in the Ukraine. As a young man, he learned Turkish language and culture, and started to work as a translator for the Belgrade branch of the Austrian Oriental Company (Orientalische Handelskompagnie). At that post, he gathered enough wealth to open up his own trading company in Vienna.

During the Battle of Vienna in 1683, he volunteered to leave the besieged and starving city and contact Duke Charles of Lorraine. Together with his trusty servant, Jerzy Michajlović, he left the city in Turkish attire and crossed enemy lines singing Ottoman songs. After contacting the duke, the couple managed to return to the city and reach it with a promise of imminent relief. Because of that information, the city council decided not to surrender to the Turkish forces of Kara Mustafa Pasha and continue the fight instead.

After the arrival of Christian forces led by the Polish king Jan III Sobieski, on September 12, the siege was broken. Kulczycki was considered a hero by the grateful townspeople of Vienna. The city council awarded him with a considerable sum of money while the burghers gave him a house in the borough of Leopoldstadt. King Jan III Sobieski himself presented Kulczycki with large amounts of coffee found in the captured camp of Kara Mustafa's army.

Kulczycki opened a coffee house in Vienna at Schlossergassl near the cathedral. It was named the Hof zur Blauen Flasche (House under the Blue Bottle). Kulczycki's abilities helped popularize coffee in Austria and with time his cafe became one of the most popular places in town. Kulczycki always served the mortar-ground coffee wearing a Turkish attire, which added to the place's popularity. Another of his innovations was to serve coffee with milk, a manner that was unknown to the Turks.

Cafes were not unknown in Europe in 1683 (several coffeehouse were in operation in Paris, London, Oxford, and Boston), so it is possible that Kulczycki's may not have been the first. But he remains a popular folk hero and the patron of all Viennese cafe owners even though his cafe closed soon after his death on February 20, 1694. Until recently, every year in October a special Kolschitzky feast was organized by the cafe owners of Vienna, who decorated their shop windows with Kulczycki's portrait, as noted by Zygmunt Gloger. Kulczycki is memorialized with a statue on Vienna's Kolschitzky street.Sculpture of Kulczycki at the corner of a street named after him

[edit] References

• Markman Ellis (2004), The Coffee House: a cultural history, Weidenfeld & Nicolson