Coffee, I Must Have Coffee

From the minute coffee arrived in Europe in the early 17^th Century the robust brew won admirers ranging from businessman Edward Lloyd to Pope Clemente VII.

Morning coffee, Author's own image.

Along with coffee came the coffeehouse, an import from the Middle East, just like coffee itself. Coffeehouses were cultural hubs attracted artists, businessmen, and intellectuals—all drawn to the drink which drove away drowsiness. For a mere penny one could buy a cup of coffee and gain admission to the coffeehouse, a place teaming with characters ready to discuss the latest innovations in art, politics, and music. These characters included intellectual giants like Isaac Newton, Abraham de Moivre, John Dryden, and Johann Sebastian Bach. In addition to coffee and conversation, coffeehouses hosted chess matches, scientific lectures, mathematical consultation, and musical concerts.

Coffeehouse soon replaced taverns as gathering places for conversation and business meetings as coffee promotes intelligent thinking while alcohol promotes drunken babbling, bad conversation, and bad business.

Lloyd's Coffeehouse. A public domain image. {PD-1923}

A coffeehouse in London owned by Edward Lloyd was popular among mariners who would go there to do business and insure their ships. Lloyd began creating lists of all the ships represented by his customers, their cargo, and their schedules. Insurance providers found these lists so useful that Lloyd’s coffeehouse became better known for its marine insurance than its coffee! The coffeehouse transformed into Lloyd’s of London, the famous insurance company which is still in operation today.

Lloyd’s was not the only coffeehouse to grow into a larger business. The London Stock Exchange, Sotherby’s Auction House, and Christie’s Auction House all grew out of coffeehouses. Even the Royal Society has its roots in the Oxford Coffee Club.

Zimmermann's coffeehouse. A public domain image. {PD-1923}

Johann Sebastian Bach frequented Zimmermann’s coffeehouse in Leipzig, Germany, a gathering place for local musicians. It’s no wonder the Bach was a coffee drinker given his hectic schedule as a teacher, composer, conductor, and father of ten children. Bach arranged and conducted weekly concerts performed by musicians from the collegium musicum at Zimmerman’s coffeehouse for ten years.

Bach, being the overachiever that he was, was not content only enjoying coffee and conducting concerts at Zimmermann’s. Inspired by the delicious drink, Bach composed BWV 211, better known as the Coffee Cantata. Bach is seen as a serious, cerebral composer, but the Coffee Cantata shows that he had a lighter side. (Listen to BWV 211 here, and read an English translation of the text here.)

Author's own image.

 Christian Friedrich Henrici, also known as Picander, a poet and librettist, collaborated with Bach on the text for BWV 211 which recounts the story of a young coffee drinker, Liesgen, and her father Schlendrian (his name literally translates to “lazy bones”). Schlendrian who vehemently opposes his daughters coffee habit. Liesgen agrees to give up most pleasures in life, like new clothes and the view from her window, if she can keep drinking coffee. But when her father threatens to prevent her from getting a husband, Liesgen gives in and agrees to give up coffee—or so she says.

Here’s where Picander original libretto ends, but Bach was not about to finish his cantata with Liesgen’s defeat. Bach had Picander add a second half to the story in which Liesgen goes behind her father’s back and forms a contract with her future husband which will allow her to drink all the coffee she wants. In the end, Schlendrian admits that it is impossible to keep women from their coffee.

Despite their love of coffee, Baroque women, aside from disreputable “coffee-trollops,” were not allowed in coffeehouses. However, like Liesgen, they were not about to let anything keep them from enjoying coffee on their own. Women formed coffee societies where they met in one another’s homes to drink coffee and talk.

A public domain image. {PD-1923}

English women were not satisfied with coffee societies and became increasingly irritated with men and their coffeehouses. In 1674 British women produced the Women’s Petition Against Coffee where they insisted that coffee made men weak. In their words: “Some of our Sots pretend tippling of this boiled Soot cures them of being Drunk; but we have reason rather to conclude it makes them so, because we find them not able to stand after it[.]”(Read the full text of the Women’s Petition Against Coffee here.)

Pietist preachers insisted that coffee drinking was as evil as using inappropriate music in church. This jab may have been particularly aimed at Bach who was a known coffee drinker and who was considered to make radical music choices for Sunday’s service.

Johann Heinrich Zedler praised the energizing effect of coffee, but mentioned its drawbacks which included weakness and a yellow complexion. Others complained that drinking coffee wasted time and distracted people from their work.

Charles II, king of England, opposed coffee and the progressive thinking promoted by coffeehouses. He was concerned the coffee drinkers might rebel against his noble rule. Charles’ answer to this problem was to ban coffeehouses. This outraged his citizens and instigated more resistance to Charles’ rule than coffee drinking did. The British government was forced to withdraw the ban after a mere eleven days.

The Baroque era was the golden age for coffee in Europe. After the 1700s the aristocrats began to drink the next popular drink, tea, and the common people soon followed. I’m normally a tea drinker myself, but while writing this post I drank a cup of coffee and enjoyed it almost as much as Liesgen did.

Sources.