I was enjoying Jennifer Wilson’s New Yorker piece (archived) on the various traumas of renting and buying (particularly in New York) when I got to this passage:
I imagined living in a society where people don’t need to own a home only to have something they can take out a mortgage on should calamity or college tuition strike. There, the flimsy divide between low- and middle-income workers wouldn’t be concretized through housing policy. In Vienna, for example, where income limits for government benefits are less stringent, eighty per cent of the population qualifies for social housing. (The Austrian city is famous for its Pawlatschen, “access balconies,” which open up onto a shared courtyard.)
Of course, I fixated on the Pawlatschen (you can see examples at the German Wikipedia article); it turns out the word Pawlatsche is borrowed from Czech pavlač, which is derived from the verb povléct ‘to cover,’ a prefixed descendant of Proto-Slavic *velťi ‘to drag’ (“Indo-European background unclear”). I thought that was interesting enough to share (and I envy the Viennese).
The spirit of
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Vienna
lives on.
Einverstanden, Genosse!
I am surprised to hear that Vienna is “famous for Pawlatschen”, it is a style that I associate with Budapest or Brno. It is generally a Monarchy era working class housing style, so I’m not sure why the author wants to connect it to social housing. As the Wikipedia article notes, Vienna prohibited building them after 1881 so we have fewer examples than other KuK cities. Generally Viennese « Gemeindebau » , including the famous examples from the Rotes Wien era, have apartments accessible from interior stairwells not exterior balconies.
I have lived here for 14 years and have never lived in a building with Pawlatschen, and as far as I can recall have never even visited anyone living in a building with Pawlatschen, so you can transfer your envy towards the Hungarians. Whenever I have rented an Air BnB apartment in Budapest, the building would have a beautiful interior courtyard with balconies. I remember thinking “how come we don’t have these in Vienna?”
They are also fairy typical for old Lemberg / Lwow / L’viv, although I never heard any specific word for their courtyard balconies. They just say “entrance from the balcony”. Sometimes a bathroom has a separate entrance from the balcony!
The Czech word probably evolved from “awning” => “covered gallery” => courtyard balcony. In archaic Russian there is a similar word паволока, “a fancy fabric cover” and generally a textile used for such a purpose. It was an item of value and the chronicles occasionally measure values in it, say, a slave was worth 2 pavoloks:
И аще ускочить челядинъ от Руси, по не же приидуть въ страну царства нашего, и от святаго Мамы, и аще будеть и обрящеться, да поимуть и́, аще ли не обрящется, да на роту идут наши христеяне руси, а не христьянии — по закону своему, ти тогда взимають от нас цѣну свою, якоже уставлено есть преже, 2 паволоцѣ за челядинъ.
The article tends to confirm that New Yorkers who write for The New Yorker are frequently the most parochial and provincial of Americans – ignorant and incurious about the radically different ways other people live outside the city limits. With, in this case, the partial exception of the writer imagining she knows a little about living in Los Angeles and selected other locales because of course she has seen fictional movies and tv shows set there.
German wikipedia, FWIW, sez ‘Die engen, teils bereits als Element sozialen Wohnens konzipierten, im 20. Jahrhundert oft baufälligen Pawlatschenhäuser entwickelten sich zu Wohngebieten unterer Einkommensgruppen und umgangssprachlich wurde „Pawlatsche“ auch zum Synonym eines baufälligen Hauses.’ Google translate Englishes that as ‘The narrow, partly already designed as an element of social housing, often dilapidated Pawlatschen houses in the 20th century developed into residential areas for lower income groups and colloquially “Pawlatsche” also became a synonym for a dilapidated house.’
I have lived here for 14 years and have never lived in a building with Pawlatschen, and as far as I can recall have never even visited anyone living in a building with Pawlatschen, so you can transfer your envy towards the Hungarians.
Done! My grandson recently spent some time in Budapest, and the pictures he sent were gorgeous.
The Wikidata English name is “access balcony”, also used for the photo categories in wikimedia, except the subcategory Pawlatschen in Vienna,
… colloquially “Pawlatsche” also became a synonym for a dilapidated house.’
source: etymonline.com
In archaic Russian there is a similar word паволока, “a fancy fabric cover” and generally a textile used for such a purpose.
Thanks, it’s nice to know there’s a Russian cognate!
I didn’t even know the word. Not sure I’ve seen the thing (as opposed to possibly former ones subdivided by panels into one balcony per apartment).
Red Vienna keeps on keeping on even though the Reds (Social Democrats) no longer have a majority on their own. The city of Vienna remains the world’s biggest homeowner. The lack of an income limit for social, i.e. city-owned, housing is deliberate – this way, you can never be sure from someone’s address that they’re poor. AOC recently proposed to copy the whole thing for America.
After some Google Translate on the German Wikiparticle, I gather these things are reached by indoor stairs, often spiral. In the building I live in in New Mexico, the only access to the second floor is a Pawlatsche reached by an outdoor stair, up whose elaborate railing I grow morning glories, but I’m going to try Ipomoea lobata this summer. “Access balcony” seems a good term.
Note added in proof: The summer before last, we residents of this complex had a couple potluck dinners outdoors. If we do that again and have it on the balcony, and if people bring too much food as always, we could have a potluck potlatch on the Pawlatsche
Pawlatsch : access balcony
Norw. svalgang. Both the word and the building element has a long history. Da. svalegang looks like a folk etymology on svale “swallow (bird)”.
They are also dirt common in contemporary apartment buildings — i.e. this consulting structural engineer has come to know them very well.
There was some discussion of svalgang in the comments on swale.
I did remember that, but thought it was longer ago. Also (briefly) Svalastog.
Pawlatsche is stressed on the second syllable, which suggests to me it was borrowed into Viennese from Hungarian, or maybe Yiddish or even Rotwelsch. Wouldn’t a straight loan from Czech have produced a “Pawlatsch” with initial stress?