Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften

Abstract:
The paper analyses hitherto unpublished documents of an informal gathering of young men, mainly from Germany and the Danube Monarchy, as mainly documented for the year 1901 in Rome. They met without an appointment in a typical Roman trattoria, which had become a second home for the participants. In this often wine-soaked atmosphere, entries were made in a 170 page album, now kept in the archive of the Austrian Historical Institute in Rome with the name of this informal gathering “Gemischte Gesellschaft” in golden letters. The particular were not united by any professional network, they had presumably come to Rome for a more or less long tie for a variety of reasons. Here they could move free form domestic conventions and follow their likings. The innkeeper of the pub administered the folio and presented it to the changing guests of the “Mixed Society” in memory of the convivial hours spent in the pub, the friendships made there; the jokes and ‘adventures’ experienced together were recorded by the participants in form of greetings, poems, drawings and caricatures. Numerous postcards form ‘alumni’ have been preserved. The Hungartian illustrator Gyula Éder often captured typical situations of the individual friends in pictures. The album provides an authentic insight into a hitherto unexamined category of leisure behaviour of young foreigners who considered themselves Europeans in Rom around 1900, they did not belong to any artistic, commercial or religious community but probably met by chance in the trattoria and became friends there. For example, this private aspect of the Roman stay of Hans Posse, late director of the Dresden Gemäldegalerie, and that of Ignaz Philipp Dengel, known in the circle of friends as “The Cardinal”, director of the Austrian Historical Institute from 1929 to 1938, were completely unknown.