Berggasse 19
Tel. 01- 319 1596
Subway: Schottentor
Open: 9am- 5pm daily
Freud Museum is a former residence of father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud. It was both his house and a office. Famous doctor moved here in 1891 when it was just completed. Most of the works that made him famous were made within these walls. Freud was forced to abandon his residence in 1938 when citizen of Jewish ancestors started feeling the heat from the discriminatory laws set by Adolf Hitler and his Nazi government. He moved to London, Great Britain. In 1971 a museum was opened here. It holds items that were used by Freud as well as a library with over 35,000 volumes. Additionally there is a Sigmund Freud Foundation attached to the museum.
The museum is located in Berggasse 19 in Vienna's
ninth district (Alsergrund). Here Freud lived and worked from 1891
to 1938. In 1891 he moved into a new building with his family. The
old building was home to politician Victor Adler before it has been
demolished. After the "Anschluss" of Austria to the German Reich
Freud had to emigrate in 1938 because of his Jewish descent with his
daughter Anna Freud to London, where he died a year later. When
emigrating, Marie Bonaparte helped him; Freud could take all his
furniture with him.
In the rooms in which he lived for 47
years and wrote most of his writings, a documentation of his life
and work can be seen since Freud museum has opened in 1971. Changing
special exhibitions and a collection of modern art show the
influence of psychoanalysis on art and society. The museum consists
of Freud's former practice and part of his then private apartment.
Attached is a library that is Europe's largest study library for
psychoanalysis with 35,000 volumes, and the research institute of
the Sigmund Freud Private Foundation, founded in 2003. Since 2002,
the Freud museum has been operating a showroom for contemporary art
(since 2014 under the title Schauraum Berggasse 19) in a room on the
ground floor of the building where until 1938 the headquarters of
the kosher butchery Siegmund Kornmehl was located. In this
exhibition space, which can only be viewed through the glazed window
front, installations of contemporary artists and Freud and
psychoanalysis topics have since been interchanged at irregular
intervals. To date, works by Joseph Kosuth, Louise Bourgeois, Monika
Sosnowska, Ernesto Neto, Joan Jonas, Clegg & Guttmann, Franz West,
Peter Kogler, Susan Hefuna and Markus Schinwald have been on show.
Original pieces from Freud's estate can be seen in the museum as
well as the practice's waiting room and some pieces from Freud's
extensive collection of ancient works of art, mostly small statues.
However, the majority of the earlier facility with the famous couch
is located in what is now the Freud Museum in London, where Anna
Freud lived until her death in 1982.
In addition to Vienna
and London, since 2006 there is a third Freud Museum in Příbor
(Freiberg in Moravia) in today's Czech Republic. There the
birthplace of Sigmund Freud was opened to the public.
The
Museum in der Berggasse was opened in 1971 by the Sigmund Freud
Society in the presence of Freud's youngest daughter Anna Freud.
Significantly involved in the foundation was the Viennese
psychoanalyst Harald Leupold-Löwenthal. In 1996, an extension was
made, which made special exhibition and event space possible. In
2003, the museum was incorporated into the Sigmund Freud Private
Foundation, whose chairman is Rudolf Dirisamer. In 2006, the City of
Vienna incorporated the entire Berggasse 19 building into the
Foundation, in order to lay the foundation for the expansion and
opening of all Freud-occupied space for the Museum. The financing of
this project is still open.
Director of the museum was Inge
Scholz-Strasser from 1996 to 2013; since then the post was taken by
Monika Pessler. From 1992 until her death in 2008, historian Lydia
Marinelli worked at the Sigmund Freud Museum. The museum hosts the
Sigmund Freud Lecture, which has been held every year since 1970 on
May 6, Freud's birthday. Prominent psychoanalysts speak here about
current topics. This lecture was founded by the Sigmund Freud
Society and is now continued by the Sigmund Freud Private
Foundation. It now takes place at changing venues in Vienna.
In 2017, the Freud museum recorded 106,315 visits. In 2016, 103,722
visits were reported. In 2015, there were 91,322, in 2014 84,293
visits.
By 2020, the entire first floor of the building is to
be made accessible to visitors through a redesign of the museum,
including the part of Freud's former apartment, which has not
previously been accessible. Of the budgeted € 3.9 million in 2017,
2.5 million will be financed by the City of Vienna.