Type “Viennese oyster” into a search engine and you will rarely end up with seafood. The term usually refers to an acrobatic lovemaking position in which the legs are crossed behind the head. Why Vienna, of all places, lent its name to it is something nobody can say for certain, which makes it a very Viennese story indeed.
A legend without a source
You will often read that the position was fashionable in Vienna around 1840 and much requested in the brothels of the Biedermeier era. There is no evidence for any of it. The term first appears in print in 1972, as “Viennese oyster” in Alex Comfort’s bestseller The Joy of Sex, without a word on where the name came from. The German “Wiener Auster” only shows up from the 1980s. So the name looks more like an import with a Viennese label than an old Viennese original.
Real oysters in old Vienna
Vienna did have oysters, though, and they were much desired. In 1824 a shop with the telling name “Zur Stadt Triest”, after the monarchy’s great port, advertised in the Wiener Zeitung that it always had “fresh oysters” in stock in Himmelpfortgasse. They remained a luxury: until the late 19th century, sea fish on Viennese tables mostly meant stockfish and salted herring. A Viennese cookbook of 1827 even counts the oyster as a “fish”, together with the beaver and the frog, which conveniently meant it could be enjoyed on fast days.
How much oysters stirred the imagination shows in a newspaper sketch from 1835: the single word “Oysters!” on a shop sign, it teased, outshone ten thousand theatre posters.
The hidden Vienna
Position or delicacy, the Viennese oyster shows how happily Vienna spins stories around itself, and how much fun it is to follow them up. Stories behind the façades are what we do. On our private tour of hidden Vienna we take you to courtyards, lanes and anecdotes you will not find in any guidebook, and we enjoy separating legend from fact along the way. If you like your history with a little spice, read our story of the Graben nymphs of the 18th century.
