Above: Musicians in a Vienna Inn by Johann Michael Kupfer (1859-1917). The performer is a fiakersanger in cab driver garb.

Source: AskArt.com.

1. Josef Bratfisch (continued)

Josef began his musical career in 1872, when he was 25 years old, performing in "Heurigen" or wine taverns. These were temporary taverns operated under special license by vinyards where customers could bring their own food and sample the new wines.

Josef made a name for himself as a "natural singer" (an untrained but accomplished singer) and as an artistic whistler. By the 1880s he was famous all over Vienna. The appeal of being driven around by a musical celebrity no doubt attracted customers to the Wollner company.

As a genuine cabbie Josef profited from a newly rediscovered musical genre, that of the fiakersanger, or singing cab driver. The fiakersanger repertoire included both popular songs and specially composed songs on a cab driving theme called fiakerlieder.

The tradition dates back more than two centuries and was probably old when Emmanuel Schikaneder, who wrote the libretto for Mozart's The Magic Flute, put the Viennese cab driver on stage in his 1792 comedy Die Fiaker in Wien which unfortunately is now lost.

"All we know about it is that it was about a Fiaker, a horse-cab driver, whose wife wants to be more than just the wife of a Fiaker, until he catches her at it" (Sienicki 53).

The fiakerlied genre was given a new lease on life when Gustav Pick (1832-1921) published his immensely popular Wiener Fiakerlied. Pick's song was an immediate international hit and was translated into several languages, including Turkish.

Josef knew Gustav Pick and was not only present when Pick introduced Wiener Fiakerlied to guests at his apartment, he is also mentioned in the song itself (see Appendix).

Josef was part of a lively community of musicians and singers which not only included Gustav Pick but also the artist Johann Michael Kupfer who painted Josef's portrait. Kupfer was a popular artist who painted scenes of Viennese life. One of his paintings (left) captures the conviviality of the small Viennese inns where Josef got his start as a performer.