Raids in Berggasse
On March 15, 1938, three days after the German troops had entered Austria, an SA platoon searches Berggasse 19. Two days later, Princess Marie Bonaparte arrives from Paris in order to offer organizational, diplomatic, and financial support to the Freud family. On March 22, the Gestapo raids Freud’s rooms. Anna Freud is arrested and taken to the Gestapo headquarters at the former Hotel Metropol at Morzinplatz; she only returns in the evening after hours of questioning.
The «Freud case» is arbitrated at the highest diplomatic level. William C. Bullitt—American ambassador to France, Sigmund Freud’s former patient and co-author, and a personal friend of President Roosevelt—sends the American consul general John Wiley to Vienna. His task is to set into motion Freud’s safe departure. By the end of March 1938, thanks to the efforts of British psychoanalyst Ernest Jones, the Freud family’s permission to enter England is assured.