While the king of Prussia exploited his subjects by using the state coffee monopoly as a means of extortion, the duke of Wuerttemberg had a scheme of his own. He sold to Joseph Suess-Oppenheimer, an unscrupulous financier, the exclusive privilege of keeping coffee houses in Wuerttemberg. Suess-Oppenheimer in turn sold the individual coffee-house licenses to the highest bidders, and accumulated a considerable fortune. He was the first "coffee king." But coffee outlived all these unjust slanders and cruel taxations of too paternal governments, and gradually took its rightful place as one of the favorite beverages of the German people. [Illustration: KOLSCHITZKY, THE GREAT BROTHER-HEART, IN HIS BLUE BOTTLE CAFE, VIENNA, 1683 From a lithograph after the painting by Franz Schams, entitled "Das Erste (Kulczycki'sche) Kaffee Haus"] CHAPTER IX TELLING HOW COFFEE CAME TO VIENNA _The romantic adventure of Franz George Kolschitzky, who carried "a message to Garcia" through the enemy's lines and won for himself the honor of being the first to teach the Viennese the art of making coffee, to say nothing of falling heir to the supplies of the green beans left behind by the Turks; also the gift of a house from a grateful municipality, and a statue after death--Affectionate regard in which "brother-heart" Kolschitzky is held as the patron saint of the Vienna kaffee-sieder--Life in the early Vienna cafes_ A romantic tale has been woven around the introduction of coffee into Austria. When Vienna was besieged by the Turks in 1683, so runs the legend, Franz George Kolschitzky, a native of Poland, formerly an interpreter in the Turkish army, saved the city and won for himself undying fame, with coffee as his principal reward. It is not known whether, in the first siege of Vienna by the Turks in 1529, the invaders boiled coffee over their camp fires that surrounded the Austrian capital; although they might have done so, as Selim I, after conquering Egypt in 1517, had brought with him to Constantinople large stores of coffee as part of his booty. But it is certain that when they returned to the attack, 154 years later, they carried with them a plentiful supply of the green beans.