Passers-by and neo-breakfasters are always easy to baffle if we explain that the breakfast they are looking at is not registered, thus not officially authorised. In fact – with the exception of a nightly “candlelight breakfast” – no breakfast has ever been registered. To do something that is not explicitly allowed, is often viewed as very courageous, even as borderline legal. As a reaction to it, we often hear: “Something like this would not be possible where we are from (in Grammatneusiedl, in Luxembourg, in Germany, etc.)!”
If we involuntarily take in the quaint role of being the vivid proof of the particularly liberal Austrian legislation, respectively for the liberality of the Austrian or especially the Viennese executive authority, we get the chance to softly disagree and to invite to test the impossibility of having breakfast within the own surroundings. Because in fact the legislation is not as rigid as often imagined.

The Verfassungsgerichtshof only values the gathering of several persons as an assembly in the sense of VersG (Versammlungsgesetz 1867; 1953), if it is organised with the intention to encourage the participants to act together (debate, discussion, mainfestation etc.) and so cause an association among the gathered results (VfGH, Slg. 4586/63, 5193/66, 5195/66, 8685/79, 9783/83, 10443/85, 10 608/85, 10 955, 11 651/88, 11 866/88, 11 904/88, 11935/88, 12 161/89). An assembly is – in other words – a congregation for the instant, a scheduled gathering of a number of people within a non-institutional community (see also Winkler, p 199,212,229,272); or, the gathering of people (also on streets) with the objective to debate opinions or demonstrate opinions to others to initiate a collective action (see also Deutsches BVerfG 11.6.1991 ! EvR772/90, EUGRZ 1991, p 363); or the collective expression of opinions with the aim of intellectual debate.

The common wish to be together and stay together is essential for an assembly in the narrower sense, even if participants dispute with each other. It is not essential if the assembly was planed or occurred spontaneously.

So much to the constitutional law in the case of the collective utilisation of public space, which is often picked out as a central theme in breakfasts (as for example the authorisation of the breakfasts is always questioned by passers-by) and which can simply and implicitly be explained through the practise of having breakfast by showing that this form of utilisation is – simply – possible.

Aside from legal issues, having breakfast is an excellent tool to extend the own imagination and the models to utilisation of public space in practice. The common culture of concession, thus the assumption that only something that is explicitly allowed is not forbidden, draws the borders of possibilities considerably tighter than necessary and avoids real or imaginary conflicts before they even occur. This safety distance to not explicitly allowed and not formulated behaviors, to not or not yet established models is deeply anchored in culture. We also still have a little stage fright if we have breakfasts in very prominent locations. We still expect that this time a policeman will show up with who we will have to debate or who tries to drive us away, even if we should know better after years of reverse experiences. In this sense, establishing a new behavior-model within the public, thus the model of public breakfast, cannot be the cause of permanent breakfast in practice. Passers-by should not be taught the right, thus courageous behavior of citizens. Rather a variety of possibilities should be pointed out and should inspire to design and actualise new and adequate utilisation of the public space.

Thus, naturally, demands on the space, the quality of the space, arise. From our view, this demand does not entail, as one could imagine, to install equipment permanently for our utilisation on streets, squares or in parks, namely table and chairs for having breakfast. What rather arises from the practise of having breakfast, from the search of appropriate locations, is the demand for flexible space, which does not provide a fixed utilisation, but make many uses possible. That is, and we do not want to leave this in doubt, a political demand, because what could be more political than the request to have the power to have resources at our command, especially public resources and public spaces.

2003 peter josef populorum

Public and pseudo-public

In practice the breakfaster seldom hits the limit of what the executive authority tolerates, respectively has to tolerate. Considerably more often we meet private security services, if we set up tables, chairs and coffee pots in a location. We were banished by the responsible security of the Museumsquartier from the court yard – with the information that the property is operated by a private company. Also ÖBB removes not suitable persons and activities from the station premises. A right to assemble here, as applicable in public spaces, does not exist for private spaces of course. On the one hand it is exciting that these private spaces mimicry public spaces if it serves the commercial interests of the operator. In the Shopping Center Nord for example, metal street signs refer to streets and squares of the first district, sales booths look like market stands and are next to lawn chairs and parasols under which a popular car manufacturer sells his newest models. The pictures of publicity that are evoked are obviously attractive and are willingly used to attract customers. These pictures can indeed camouflage that essential moments of publicity are missing here, first and foremost the right to stay in these spaces. Strictly speaking, private operators or owners do not even need a justification to banish not suitable visitors from the location. In this pseudo-public space no demonstration can take place, no homeless can hang out and of course there is no right that assemblies for the instant can be established as talked about in the above. As long as one only wants to shop (with ATM card and if possible no deterring skin color) no problem arises from these limitations. But seemingly even the paying customer of large shopping centers does not want to be reduced to the role of a mere customer so that one has to offer at least urban ambiance and at least some icons of the public space.

Another form of pseudo-publicity is younger than SCS and SCN and breaks with a certain perfidiousness in through the back door: the privatisation of former public institutions. Granted, in the national library setting up a breakfast table in former times would also not have been possible. But since conversion into a private company an entrance fee has to be paid, which does not leave a doubt that aimless stay is not intended anymore. If not only single museums, single institutions and houses are privatised, but also, like in the Museumsquartier, the entire premises with root and branch, the situation becomes even more odd. One is used to regard these spaces as public and without a cause we will not notice that they are not public (anymore).

These two phenomenons – the camouflage of private, commercial rooms as public and the conversion of public spaces into privately operated – make it more and more difficult to detect in what kind of space we are. Permanent breakfast is a very useful litmus test, to ascertain the character of publicity. Because to have breakfast also always means to insist on the right to assemble, to publicly express oneself and use public resources.

Where we are allowed to have breakfast, there is publicity and vice versa: a space, at least a free space in which we cannot have breakfast is not a public space. Location and time of an assembly cause an immediate socio-political tension between national legislation regarding utilisation of public space and the acting persons (see also occupation of the Burggarten in the early 80s). A breakfast in a public space  can therefore always be regarded as a political act.

Horror vacui

Luckily there is still plenty of public space in which we can have breakfast despite federal economy measures and neo-conservatively motivated reorganisation of public institutions. Streets, squares, parks, street refuges, short-term parking zones, the Strudelhofstiege and the busstops of the Wiener Linien.

Of course beautiful locations, felicitous squares should be used, especially the former manorial spaces. The city is yours. Every year on May 1 we have breakfast at the Heldenplatz. An every-day-activity like having breakfast on the grounds of the Hofburg plays with the picture of the sovereign, who formerly was the Emperor and used the wide area of the Burg to satisfy his private needs. To be sovereign could also mean to acquire the sensual pleasure of these spaces every day. Schoenbrunn for everyone, not only for touristic contemplation, to take pictures, but also to live in it.

If we leave the Burggärten in direction of the old and new suburbs it becomes tight. Not only because of space limitations. A phenomenon, which is encountered often, we called “horror vacuti”, the fear of the empty space. Because we could almost formulate as a rule, that everywhere where there is little space, something certainly is in the way. A flower trough, a tulip bed, a bench, a fountain, a piece of art. As a general rule, always in the center of the square. Possibly these things are placed there to provide sensual pleasure to the sovereign, so he does not always have to move to the Hofburg or Schönbrunn when he feels like he needs something beautiful. But possibly these things are placed there, to not even awaken the suspicion that this space could be used in some way. The sovereign, who would go to his former hunting ground on every reasonably beautiful spring day to smell the grass in bright flocks, to skate, to play ball, to make music and picnic could namely get the idea to also do all these in this space. But possibly many people who spend their lives with planing and landscaping such squares, suffer from a form of agoraphobia, which forbids them to leave the object of their design empty. Nothing is more adequate to disperse this fear than a well placed, set breakfast table.

Text: Ursula Hofbauer

foto: 2003 friedemann derschmidt