On the Social Construction of Space in Prague Coffee Houses around 1900

In the context of Prague's progressive urbanization into a European metropolis and the special needs of its heterogeneous urban population, consisting of a Czech majority and a German and Jewish minority, coffee houses developed into special spaces of public life. The lecture aims to demonstrate the significance and social relevance of Prague coffee houses and to address the question of the extent to which they played an important role in the creation and construction of concrete spaces and spatial images in the course of the Czech national emancipation process in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

On the theoretical-conceptual level, the lecture picks up on the concept of the place in the style of Tim Cresswell and deals with making spaces in the two dimensions of place making and place framing. Thus, a connection between human geography concepts and current discussions of Slavic art and cultural history takes place on the basis of classical archive sources and document analyses. The lecture is based on the results of a master thesis, which was submitted to the Chair of Slavic Art and Cultural History under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Ada Raev in the field of Slavic Studies.