SIGMUND FREUD MUSEUM – VIENNA
Former Home and Office of the Father of Psychoanalysis
In the Alsergrund district of Vienna just to the west of the central city ring at Berggasse 19, the apartment rooms once occupied by the father of psychoanalysis for most of his professional life are now the home of the Sigmund Freud Museum. Freud moved into the building in 1891 with his young family, lived, wrote and held his practice there for 37 years until being forced to leave Austria after the annex by Hitler in 1938, with the aging world renowned doctor who revolutionized the understanding of the human mind dying just a few months later in England.
Exhibition
The exhibition of the Sigmund Freud Museum of Vienna documents the life and work of the founder of psychoanalysis, taking up the living rooms and the former office where Freund saw his patients and practiced his hypnosis techniques. The museum contains some original furnishings, including the doctor’s waiting room along with his spectacles, pen and note pads, though much of the personal furniture was removed and lost during the war years.
The founding of the museum in 1971 was aided by Freud’s youngest surviving daughter Anna, who provided a selection from Freud’s collection of antiquities, and signed copies and first editions of his published works. The exhibit helps provide a look into Sigmund Freud's history, his personal story and his cultural environment of friends and fellow researchers, and the development of the theory and practice of psychoanalysis. A video room offers a film narrated by Anna Freud including film of family from the 1930s. The museum had been added to and expanded over the years, with rooms of photo exhibits and documents with the addition of a new library and museum shop, with a modern lecture and exhibition hall which offers a changing schedule of special exhibitions.
Library
The library archive holds upwards of 2,000 items, mostly photographs, but also drawings, paintings, prints and sculptures. The collection includes almost all of the known existing photos of Sigmund Freud and his family, with photographs of Anna Freud and images from various psychoanalytic congresses. Portraits of Freud's teachers and colleagues from medicine and psychiatry and the emerging psychoanalytic movement complete the collection. The museum also has a number of portraits and busts of Dr. Freud.
Visiting the Sigmund Freud Museum
The museum is open daily from 10 am to 6pm. Tours are available for groups of 5 or more. To get there, take underground U2 to Schottentor, or U4 to Schottenring, D Tram via Schlickgasse, 37, 38, 40, 41, 42, or bus 40A to Berggasse. Library research is by appointment. And if you want to really make yourself at home a “Dinner at the Museum” is offered for groups up to 12, with gourmet cuisine served in Sigmund Freud’s former family parlor, or just have a Viennese Coffee next door at the Freud Café (see Cafes of Vienna). © Bargain Travel Europe
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