Archive

The archive's holdings include documents on the history of psychoanalysis, with an emphasis on records relating to Sigmund Freud and his family. Another important part is the picture archive. The archive also holds a small collection of posters, as well as a stock of audiovisual media (CDs, VHS, DVDs, audio cassettes and CD-ROMs). Furthermore, several (partial) estates of psychoanalysts are kept and can be examined.

 

Picture Archive

The picture archive contains approximately 2,000 documents, mainly photographs, but also drawings and paintings, prints and sculptures. The collection includes most of the existing photographs of Sigmund Freud and his family, a large volume of Anna Freud pictures, photographs from psychoanalytic congresses and associations, and portrait shots of Freud's teachers and colleagues in medicine, psychiatry, and the emerging psychoanalytic movement.

More Information on the usage of these pictures

Estates

The archive of the Sigmund Freud Museum accepts estates from psychoanalysts and scientists and ensures that they are properly stored and catalogued. The scientific processing of these estates is open for external scientists.

Sisters Freud

The Freud sisters' estate includes documentation of their planned emigration. After Freud's departure in June 1938, four of his five sisters remained in Vienna. All attempts to bring the ladies out of Austria failed due to the impossibility of obtaining foreign visas for them. All four were deported to concentration camps and killed there.

The estate, numbered 44/1 to 44/539, contains various types of documents from financial and legal procedures, as well as private letters from the sisters to various people, lawyers and notaries, in their attempt to settle property matters in accordance with the regime's regulations and to obtain the necessary visas for their departure.

The documents are arranged and numbered consecutively; copies are available for use.

Processing possibilities:

Research could be done on the individuals as well as on emigration and persecution policies in the Third Reich. From an economic history perspective, the property and taxation regulations of the National Socialist regime, which are described very clearly in the letters, tax returns and accounts, would be of interest.

Alexander Freud

The Alexander Freud estate includes the emigration files and the restitution papers. The collection contains materials related to the restitution proceedings of Sigmund Freud's brother, Alexander. The majority of the documents are letters: correspondence between Harry Freud (son of Alexander Freud and applicant in the proceedings), his lawyers in Vienna and in Berlin, and various institutions involved in the restitution process. Also preserved as enclosures to the correspondence are bank statements, forms, newspaper clippings, and handwritten notes.

The main part of dated documents is between 1959 and 1974, with additional documentation on the proceedings (testimonials, etc.) going back to 1938.

Correspondence was mostly in German, but also in English. The estate is divided into thematic and chronological folders. The thematic folders are recorded as entire folders (one sign. no. per folder). The documents in the chronological folders are indexed as individual letters in the database. (Signature group 71.)

The process lasted from 1945 to 1972, and applications were made to the Restitution Commission at the Vienna Regional Court and to the Berlin Restitution Offices. Harry Freud was not able to experience the outcome of the trial, as he died in 1969. His wife Leli Freud received a partial settlement for the securities and compensation for jewelry in November 1972 (see letter of 08.11.1972).

Processing Options:

The entire estate has been arranged and scanned in cooperation with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, but has not yet been recorded in detail and would require close perusal and arrangement sheet by sheet before scholarly work can be done with it. After such individual indexing, including description and indexing of the objects, especially the correspondence and the numerous forms and lists, case-specific processing would be considered, for example in connection with restitution per se or the history of National Socialism.

Harry Freud

The estate of Harry Freud (the son of Sigmund's younger brother Alexander) includes primarily pictures, photo albums, books, and scrapbooks with newspaper clippings. Relevant names within the estate include Anne Berman, Marie Bonaparte, Anna Freud, Dorothy Burlingham, Mathilde Hollitscher, Paula Fichtel, Rudolf Ekstein, Paul Federn, Ernest Jones, Leopold Kohr, Irving Stone, Max Schnur, Lilly Marle, Ernst Freud, Ernest Freud, Sophie Freud, Alexander Freud, Jenny Anspach, Ulrich Fontaine, Timothy Schmiderer, Mary Burlingham, and Simon Schmiderer.

Below is an approximate item breakdown based on the appraisal report prepared at the time:

7 photo travel albums

4 scrapbooks

Photo album

Various separata and journals

Photos Alexander and Sigmund Freud

All objects have been viewed, inventoried and completely recorded.

Eva Rosenfeld

The estate of Eva Rosenfeld was acquired in 2001 with the support of the Federal Ministry of Science and Research (BMWF) and includes private correspondence as well as photographs and over 180 books from Eva Rosenfeld's library. In total, the estate consists of 289 individual items, all of which have been catalogued and indexed. Most of the letters in the Rosenfeld collection are correspondence with Anna Freud, a smaller portion from correspondence with other persons. This collection has also been recorded and sorted, and an interesting field of research could certainly be found here, possibly in connection with supplementary holdings.

Eva Rosenfeld (1892-1977), who came from a Brno-Berlin family, was a close confidante of Anna Freud, with whom she, together with Dorothy Burlingham, founded the so-called "Hietzinger Schule" at Wattmanngasse 11 in Vienna in 1927. Eva Rosenfeld's correspondence with Anna Freud in this estate, also dates from this period and not only reveals their private relationship, but also contains important contributions to the history of psychoanalytic pedagogy. A photo album created by Eva Rosenfeld shows photographs of the school from 1928, including the dining room in Wattmanngasse designed by Adolf Loos. Impressions of the everyday life of the Rosenfeld family and their friends, of the school in Wattmanngasse and the summer stays in Grundlsee are conveyed by photo albums created by Eva Rosenfeld herself. An interesting, large-format album, entitled "Unserem Evchen" ("To Our Little Evi"), which was given to Eva Rosenfeld by her family on the occasion of her wedding to her cousin Valentin, offers scenes from the upper middle-class everyday life of the Rosenfeld family in Berlin in posed tableaus, which are reminiscent of film stills and, in addition to the private family history, also show sociologically significant insights into bourgeois dwelling culture around 1900. Furthermore, the estate includes numerous documents that document the Rosenfeld family's relationship to the film and theater world, as well as illustrate their relationship to the Freud household.

Processing options:

The correspondence between Anna and Eva could be researched and evaluated in more detail, including the counterparts from Eva to Anna that are not in the archive's possession, or could be used as supporting material for biographical work.

Margarethe Trautenegg

he Trautenegg estate was donated in 2004 by Ines Rieder and Diana Voigt, who wrote a book about Margarethe Trautenegg and conducted numerous taped interviews beforehand. The collection contains both the tapes with the interviews and the transcripts of the conversations, as well as photos, letters and documents from Margarethe Trautenegg's estate. The rights to the tape interviews remain with the interviewers; further publications require their express consent.

Margarethe Trautenegg, née Csonka, was sent to Dr. Freud by her parents because of her homosexual tendencies. In fact, she was outraged by the "Oedipal" interpretations of her behavior and attributed them to the "dirty imagination of the old doctor." Because the patient was not under the suffering pressure of an inner conflict or illness and did not otherwise develop her own motivation for analysis, Freud soon discontinued the treatment. Nevertheless, he wrote a paper about the case: "On the Psychogenesis of a Case of Female Homosexuality" (1920). Under the Nazi regime, Margarethe Trautenegg fled to Cuba, where she rediscovered her former hobby of portrait painting, but returned to Vienna via Paris in 1949. She spent her later years traveling frequently until, at nearly one hundred years of age, she died in Vienna in 1999.

Processing Options:

The estate is recorded and listed, but the transcripts have not been digitized, which would certainly be helpful for processing. The individual typescripts are roughly arranged, but have not been examined or processed in detail or checked for completeness or similarity. For research on Margarethe Trautenegg's life, the estate offers rich material. The interviews are full of personal details that shed much more light on the private life than a published biography could. Apart from research on the person herself, the estate could also be interesting in connection with other people. The photos of the portraits she painted could be used for research on the people portrayed.

Richard Sterba

Richard Sterba was one of the first graduates of the Psychoanalytic Teaching Institute founded by the Vienna Psychoanalytic Association (WPV). After graduation, he first became an associate and soon after a full member of the WPV, worked at the outpatient clinic and later as a teaching analyst. After the Nazi takeover, Sterba emigrated to the USA with his wife, who also was a committed member of the WPV. He became a co-founder of the Detroit Psychoanalytic Society and taught at the University College of Medicine in Detroit. He died in 1989.

Sterba's estate was purchased in 1993 and consists of admission protocols, case reports, letters, books, dream protocols, notes, reviews, manuscripts, and extensive preliminary work on Sterba's Hand Dictionary of Psychoanalysis. Thematic emphases include psychoanalysis, dream interpretation, child psychology, hysteria, and memory. Personal records, which are interwoven with the professional ones and can be found, for example, in the pocket diaries, also contribute to an interesting overall picture of the analyst. The most important documents in the collection are also available as photocopies; redundant material, such as multiple corrections of typescripts, are only available in the original. None of the items have been digitized.

The entire estate of Richard Sterba has been recorded, sorted, numbered and organized so that it can be used for research purposes without further effort. Furthermore, copies of a large part of the estate exist in order to preserve the originals during processing. There is a detailed list of the entire estate with a precise description, blocking note, inventory number and scope of the respective volume.

Processing possibilities:

The inventory may be particularly interesting for research on the field of psychoanalysis itself, on the definition of this field of research, and on the development of the hand dictionary begun but never completed by Sterba .

Michael Turnheim

At the end of 2013, Michael Turnheim's estate was donated by his widow Diane Turnheim. It comprises over ten thousand individual documents.

The estate contains mostly text documents on various aspects of psychoanalysis, as well as some audio documents and images. Michael Turnheim's main focus was on Lacan research and the reception of Freud, but the estate also contains material on many other fields partly related to psychoanalysis, such as mathematics (loops) or music (jazz). Business as well as private correspondence, patient files (still restricted) and documents on the École Freudienne or lectures by Jacques-Alain Miller complete the main volume of research material, excerpts, annotated copies, lectures, own texts and book manuscripts.

The entire estate has been roughly compiled, organized, and recorded in the database; the first nearly one thousand documents have already been recorded in depth individually. For an in-depth registration of the remaining documents, a scientific processing by a researcher familiar with French psychoanalysis would be useful and desirable.

Processing possibilities:

For researchers, the estate offers an interesting field of activity, since it contains both analytical input (lecture notes, excerpts) and scientific output (own lectures, essays, manuscripts and proofs) of the analyst, and is supplemented by documents of his work as an analyst - however, retention periods must be observed here.

Contact

Sarah Hönigschnabel
T: +43 1 319 15 96-17
s.hoenigschnabel@freud-museum.at