Freud, Berggasse 19

The permanent exhibition in Freud’s living quarters and practice rooms presents the life and work of Sigmund and Anna Freud, as well as biographical details concerning the family history. The  rooms are kept in their original layouts, thus offering an authentic experience of the birthplace of psychoanalysis. Numerous exhibits—such as objects that used to belong to the family, original manuscripts, and photographs—illustrate the stages of Freud’s career and personal biography.

Sigmund Freud’s Practice

Fascinating insights into the genesis of Freud’s theoretical work are provided by rare first editions and valuable presentation copies in Freud’s practice. Translations into numerous languages testify to the early international dissemination of psychoanalysis. The display in Freud’s treatment room focuses on the practice of psychoanalysis as a “talking cure” by referring to his case histories and texts. The place where the famous couch once stood remains empty—it was an intentional decision not to reconstruct the original interior, as Director Monika Pessler explains: “The empty space left in Freud’s treatment room since his escape from the Nazis is an explicit reference to the dark course of history. Recreating a World of Yesterday (Stefan Zweig) in these rooms—a world before Austria’s Anschluss with Nazi Germany in March 1938—as if Freud hadn’t been forced into exile in London, would be to negate an important part of his history and indeed our history, too.”

The history of the absent couch is told in an AR installation that can be accessed on-site in the treatment room. It enables the couch to temporarily return to its original position as a virtual 3D image on visitors’ smartphones.

Select photographs of the rooms at Berggasse 19 bravely and skillfully taken by Edmund Engelman in May 1938, despite being under surveillance by the Gestapo, give some indication of the rooms’ original furnishings before the Freud family fled the country that same year.

Anna Freud's rooms

Anna Freud’s adjacent living and practice rooms are dedicated to her work of combining psychoanalysis and pedagogy, which she performed together with her partner Dorothy Burlingham in Vienna and, after their emigration, in London. Anna Freud supported the establishment of the museum in the early 1970s and donated among other things the furnishings of the waiting room, which now looks as it did back in Freud’s day.

The Freud family's apartment

The private rooms of the Freud family are dedicated to Freud’s life as a family man and to his early career as a newly qualified doctor and neurologist. Objects like hospital documents and medical instruments testify to his time as a young physician; his travel toiletry kit, gifts to his wife Martha, and other personal objects provide information about his family life and “set in motion imaginations, associations, and narratives,” says Daniela Finzi, the museum’s research director. This is also where texts and manuscripts owned by the family are shared with the public. The Interpretation of Dreams is the centerpiece of the former bedroom of Mr. and Mrs. Freud. Through audio exhibits, read out by Philippe Sands and Birgit Minichmayr, visitors can learn about Sigmund Freud’s dreams in the place where they happened. A special insight into the Freuds’ everyday family life is provided by the unique home videos commentated by Anna Freud. They were recorded in the 1930s—chiefly by Marie Bonaparte, a close friend of the family—and are shown in the former kitchenette.

In the so-called Herrenzimmer (gentlemen’s salon), objects belonging to the family - an intarsia table, a painting, and a box of games—have returned to their original positions.

The rooms previously reserved for social gatherings - the Freuds’ dining room and Minna Bernays’s salon - are now used for temporary exhibitions, ranging from artistic to cultural-historical explorations, and observations.

Click here to book your ticket!

Concept and Design: Atelier Czech/Hermann Czech and Gerhard Flora
Curators: Sigmund Freud Museum/Monika Pessler and Daniela Finzi