"When we talk about August Zang, we mostly refer to his role as a newspaper proprietor," the author Barbara van Melle told Die Presse, the newspaper Zang founded, over the weekend. In 1848 -- a year of tumult and revolution in which the Kingdom of Hungary attempted to break free of the Habsburgs and freedom of the press was introduced across the empire -- Zang set up Die Presse as a liberal newspaper for the bourgeoisie. In 1864, a schism among the newspaper's staff resulted in the founding of the Neue Freie Presse, which differentiated itself from its sister publication with its travel pieces, novel serialisations, economic coverage, and political editorials. While he was formulating the ideas he'd later set down in The Jewish State, Theodor Herzl, father of the modern Zionist movement, worked as the Neue Freie Presse's literary editor and later Paris correspondent. The Neue Freie Presse was Aryanised by the Nazis in 1939, though after the Second World War Zang's original paper was reestablished as Die Presse and continues to this day as a conservative, free market-oriented daily whose influence extends beyond its circulation.
But what few people know about Zang, van Melle continued, "is that he brought the Kipferl to Paris." An essential part of the Wiener Frühstückstisch along with butter and jam, the Kipferl is a soft yeast roll formed into the crescent shape that gives the bread its name. The specific shape supposedly has something to do with the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683, though this may just be an apocryphal tale. What we do know is that in 1838, ten years prior to founding Die Presse, Zang established a bakery in Paris called Boulangerie Viennois, which produced machine-made Kipferln along with white rolls and braided loaves under the slogan, "La main de l'homme n'y a pas touché," at 92, rue de Richelieu. Parisians were initially sceptical, van Melle says, with the first customers mainly exiles from Vienna who longed for a taste of home. But once news spread that the Rothschilds were among the bakery's patrons, suddenly Boulangerie Viennois and its Kipferln became the height of fashion. Long after his return to Vienna, Zang's Kipferl remained beloved, in time evolving from a yeast dough product to something altogether flakier and butterier, becoming the croissant that, along with the baguette, remains the hallmark of the French bakery.
