Kraus wrote about Café Griensteidl [in Die demolierte Literatur] when it was about to be torn down in 1879:

Vienna is now being demolished into a metropolis. Together with the old houses the last pillars of our memories are falling, and soon an irreverent spade will have also leveled the venerable Café Griensteidl to the ground. This was the decision of its proprietors, the consequences of which cannot be foreseen. Our literature is bracing itself for a period of homelessness; the threads of artistic creativity are being cruelly severed...that coffeehouse, which like no other appeared suited to represent the true center of literary activity...Who does not remember the almost crushing profusion of newspapers and journals that made the visit to our coffeehouse a virtual necessity for those writers who had no craving for coffee?”63 

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