The Freud Museum

Note: I am traveling at the moment and got off schedule. I hope to resume my usual Friday write-ups next time.

Today I went to the Freud Museum in Hampstead, London. It is the house where Freud ended up after fleeing Nazi Vienna in 1938.

The Princess Bonaparte - great-grand-niece to the emperor and disciple of Freud’s - paid a large tax to German authorities for the psychoanalyst’s library and antiquities collection to be shipped to London. His longtime apartment and office from Berggasse 19 in Vienna are preserved more or less intact in his new house. This includes his famous couch:

Freud was able to take members of his household to London, including his wife, sister-in-law Minna Bernays, and daughter Anna, along with his housekeeper, Paula Fichtl. He was also able to obtain visas for his doctor, Max Schur, on whom he leaned heavily after his cancer diagnosis. However, he was not able to arrange travel for his sisters, who remained in Austria and died in the Holocaust. Freud still thought there might be a chance to get them out at the time he died, in September 1939.

Freud was a major target of the Nazis. His works were prominent in the infamous book burnings throughout Germany in May 1933. At the time of the Anschluss, he was still a high-profile antagonist in their eyes, but he was also an ill old man and among the most famous people in the world, so the outcry would have been great had he been arrested or sent to a concentration camp. The Freud family arranged to leave in a hurry after the Gestapo arrested Freud’s daughter, Anna, in his place. Even before her release, supporters started the arduous and expensive process of helping him leave the country.

The most striking theme of the house and museum was its archaeological aspect. Freud collected antiquities:

Patients describe his office as resembling that of a professor of archaeology. He thought the displays related to his work, seeing himself as a kind of archaeologist of the soul. He would reach under layers of respectability and repression for the person underneath. This was the most unexpected aspect of seeing the house, for me, the relationship of Freud’s self-created environment to his intellectual and professional pursuits.

Oddly enough, one of the entertainment options on the flight over was a film called Freud’s Last Session, featuring Anthony Hopkins as Freud, and set during his exile in London. The film, which is based on a play, imagines Freud in conversation with C.S. Lewis on the day war breaks out in 1939—a day when Freud only has a few weeks to live. The entry for Freud’s diary on that day only mentions that he met “a young Oxford don,” so bringing Lewis and his theology in contact with Freud felt a bit forced to me, especially on so momentous an occasion. Nevertheless, I appreciated the insight into Freud’s life in London, the more so since I knew I was going to visit his house.

The house was able to call up both the man and the public figure, in ways that I found surprising. I expected more of a confirmation of things I already knew, not a real view into his understanding of his work. The point about his antiquities was simple and illuminating, and made the visit worthwhile.