Food Advertisements and Cultural Identification in Habsburg Austria, 1890–1915

Studies of collective cultural belonging in the Habsburg lands have often focused on the state’s efforts to foster collective identification and social cohesion through national or imperial loyalties. By foregrounding official institutions and internal political considerations, these works overlook non-official sources of cultural expression and production and disconnect Habsburg history from its global context. In contrast, this paper introduces new perspectives on cultural identification in Central Europe by illustrating how culinary culture and practices constituted an alternative arena for expressing and cultivating belonging during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By examining posters that promoted so-called colonial goods such as coffee, chocolate, and tea, in Cisleithania, I argue that food advertisements invited Austrians to see themselves as part of an imagined community defined by cosmopolitan sophistication and notions of European civilization rather than political designations.

For example, advertisements portraying men and women consuming imported products evoked elegance and savoir-faire through the figures’ fashionable clothing and mannerisms. In addition, nautical motifs and depictions of Asian and African landscapes appealed to wide-spread turn-of-the-century fascination with the exotic. Furthermore, Blackamoor images, which were frequently used to promote coffee and other plantation goods, resonated with growing European awareness of racial difference. By contrasting Black Africans with white Europeans, food advertisements invited viewers to see themselves as part of white, “civilized” Europe, in contrast to “primitive” Africa. In this way, advertisements suggested that belonging was a matter of both social position and geographical location, both of which Austrians could achieve through consuming colonial goods. Culinary culture thus provided new possibilities for negotiating collective identification. By using tantalizing images evoking sophistication, exoticism, and civilization, advertisements invited viewers to step beyond the boundaries of local political affiliations, and seek to belong to a cosmopolitan, modern, Europe.