Anna's Bedroom

This and the next room belong to the second mezzanine apartment, which was only acquired in 1906. The rooms not used for Freud’s practice were occupied by the family. In 1921, Anna took up residence in the two rooms.

Previously, Freud’s sister Rosa Graf and her family had lived in this apartment. In a letter to Sándor Ferenczi dating from 1920, Freud referred to these two rooms as “the boys’ rooms”: Martin, the eldest son, was given the smaller room; his brothers Oliver and Ernst shared the larger adjacent room. Aunt Minna presumably also spent time here during the day, at least in one of the two rooms, while Martin, Oliver, and Ernst were serving in the military. Finally, after the three sons moved out, the former “boys’ rooms” were given to Anna, the youngest daughter. In early 1921, Anna Freud set up her bedroom in the smaller room.

Anna writes to her brother Ernst that this room now contains “all light-toned furniture”: the “vanity on the long wall relocated between the two closets,” “the bed on the opposite side in the window nook.” The “vanity” — in Vienna also referred to as a Psyche — which now also stands against the side wall of this room, is the “full-length mirror” that finds mention in Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle in connection with his grandson Ernstl’s so-called Fort-Da game.

There is a film of this room in which the bed is visible and next to it, a telephone.

Uncovered intercom cable. There was an internal line to Anna Freud’s friend Dorothy Burlingham, who lived on the second floor.

Dorothy Burlingham (1891–1979), daughter of the glass artist and jeweler Louis Comfort Tiffany, moved to Vienna from New York in 1925. She lived in this building as of 1929 and also became a psychoanalyst. There were two phones: one here in the bedroom and one (which was probably the base station) in the dining room. After the first raid by the SA on March 15, 1938, the housekeeper Paula Fichtl was asked to inform Dorothy if danger were to arise again. On March 22, 1938, following a visit by the Gestapo and the arrest of Anna Freud, Burlingham called the American Embassy.