Kurier/ k.at, November 11, 2021
German orginal: https://k.at/news/sigmund-freud-museum-zeigt-eine-besondere-fluchtgeschichte/401802550
Beginning tomorrow, the new exhibition of the Viennese Sigmund Freud Museum tells the stories of the predominantly Jewish Viennese psychoanalysts, who had to leave Vienna after the Anschluss. Those are “special stories of escape,” said Director Monika Pessler during today’s press conference. Almost all members and applicants of the Viennese Psychoanalytic Association (Wiener Psychoanalytische Vereinigung – WPV) were able to escape with international help.
The basis of the exhibition Organized Escape – Survival in Exile, which will be on display until April 2022, is a 20-page list, discovered some 20 years ago in the Archive of the British Psychonalatytical Society London by Thomas Aichhorn of the Working Group History of Psychoanalysis.
“The find was a coincidence,” Aichhorn explained today. The list with some 90 names – two thirds WPV members and one third applicants – was apparently prepared for the most part by the British psychoanalyst Ernest Jones in 1938 and served as a working instrument to organize and trace the escape of the Viennese psychoanalysts.
As early as March 13, 1938, one day after the Anschluss of Austria, the board of the WPV decided that all members should leave the country as soon as possible, and that the headquarters had to be re-established at Sigmund Freud’s future residence. There was agreement that no time could be lost – specifically since 38 of the 43 members residing in Vienna at the time were affected by the Nuremberg Race Laws. “At that time it was still possible to leave the country,” said Daniela Finzi, who curated the exhibition in cooperation with Pessler and the Working Group History of Psychoanalysis. “Based on the German experiences, it became clear in Vienna that the members were very much in danger,” explained Aichhorn. Thanks to the help from the worldwide psychoanalytic community, organized by Anna Freud and Ernest Jones, almost all managed to escape – with a few exceptions. Aichhorn: “unfortunately, it was not a completely successful undertaking.” Rosa Walk, Ernst Paul Hoffmann, Nikola Sugar, and Otto Brief were either interned after their escape, murdered, or died as a result of internment.
Over the past years, not only the escape of the WPV members and applicants was investigated, but also their fates afterwards – not one returned to Vienna permanently after the war, pretty much all lost friends or family in the Shoah. Many of the escapees did not have it easy during migration – in the United States, a completed medical degree was required; in London, the local psychoanalytic scene was not entirely thrilled with all the new competition from Vienna.
The labyrinth-like presentation of the collected materials, made with lots of wood, focuses on ten illustrative biographies and makes the escape routes transparent. It also provides a brief insight into the history of psychoanalysis during National Socialism (including a list of incriminated terms) and the refounding of the Viennese Psychonalaytic Association after the war. Sigmund Freud himself, who was not present at the meeting on March 13, 1938, left the city with his family not before June 4, 1938 for London, where he passed anway on September 23, 1939.
(Service – Organized Escape – Survival in Exile. Viennese Psychoanalysis 1938 and Beyond. Special exhibition at the Sigmund Freud Museum, Wien 9, Berggasse 19. November 12 2021 until April 30, 2022, Wednesday to Sunday and on Holidays, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm. https://www. freud-museum.at)