Everything about Jerzy Franciszek Kulczycki totally explained
Jerzy Franciszek Kulczycki (1640-1694) of
Sas Coat of Arms (his name often rendered in German as
Georg Franz Kolschitzky) was a member of
Polish szlachta of
Ukrainian origin and of
orthodox faith,
merchant,
spy,
diplomat and
soldier. According to a popular legend, he opened the first
café in
Vienna in 1683, using
coffee beans left by the retreating
Ottoman Turks.
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's 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
Further Information
Get more info on 'Jerzy Franciszek Kulczycki'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://jerzy_franciszek_kulczycki.totallyexplained.com">Jerzy Franciszek Kulczycki Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
