Freud Museum
Encyclopedia
The Freud Museum, at 20 Maresfield Gardens in Hampstead
, was the home of Sigmund Freud
and his family when they escaped Nazi annexation of Austria
in 1938. It remained the family home until Anna Freud
, the youngest daughter, died in 1982. The centrepiece of the museum is Freud's study, preserved just as it was during his lifetime. The Freud Museum commemorates and elucidates the work of Sigmund and Anna Freud and maintains their working environment.
The museum is open to the public Wednesday to Sunday, 12:00 - 17:00. It also organizes research and publication programmes and it has an education service which organizes seminars, conferences and special visits to the museum. The museum is a member of the London Museums of Health & Medicine
.
There are two other Freud Museums, one in Vienna
(see here
), and another which has recently opened in Příbor
, the Czech Republic
, in the house where Sigmund Freud was born. The latter was opened by president Václav Klaus
and four of Freuďs great-grandsons.
, Sigmund Freud
, left Vienna
after the Nazi
annexation of Austria
(the Anschluss
) and moved to London
, taking up residence at 20 Maresfield Gardens in Hampstead, one of London's suburbs. The house had only finished being built in 1920 in the Queen Anne Style
. A small sun room in a modern style was added at the rear by Ernst Ludwig Freud
that same year. Freud was over eighty at this time, and he died the following year, but the house remained in his family
until his youngest daughter Anna Freud
, who was a pioneer of child therapy, died in 1982.
The Freuds were able to move all of their furniture and household effects to London. The star exhibit in the museum is Freud's psychoanalytic couch. There are also Biedermeier
chests, tables and cupboards, and a collection of 18th century and 19th century Austrian painted country furniture. The museum owns Freud's collection of Egyptian
, Greek
, Roman
, and Oriental antiquities, and his reference library. The collection includes a portrait of Freud by Salvador Dalí
.
The study and library were preserved by Anna Freud
after her father's death. The bookshelf behind Freud's desk contains some of his favourite authors: not only Goethe and Shakespeare but also Heine
, Multatuli
and Anatole France
. Freud acknowledged that poets and philosophers had gained insights into the unconscious which psychoanalysis sought to explain systematically. In addition to the books, the library contains various pictures hung as Freud arranged them; these include 'Oedipus and the Riddle of the Sphinx' and 'The Lesson of Dr Charcot' plus photographs of Martha Freud, Lou Andreas-Salomé
, Yvette Guilbert
, Marie Bonaparte, and Ernst von Fleischl.
The room contains the original analytic couch brought from Berggasse 19 on which patients would recline comfortably while Freud, out of sight in the green tub chair, listened to their 'free association.' They were asked to say everything that came to mind without consciously sifting or selecting information. This method became a foundation upon which psychoanalysis was built.
, Rome
, Egypt
and the Orient
. Freud visited many archaeological sites (though not Egypt) but most of the collection was acquired from dealers in Vienna
. He confessed that his passion for collecting was second in intensity only to his addiction to cigars. Yet the importance of the collection is also evident in Freud's use of archaeology as a metaphor for psychoanalysis. One example of this is Freud's explanation to a patient that conscious material 'wears away' while what is unconscious is relatively unchanging: "I illustrated my remarks by pointing to the antique objects about my room. They were, in fact, I said, only objects found in a tomb, and their burial had been their preservation."
The garden today is largely as Freud would have known it, from the terracotta flower pot, containing a red geranium (with Anna Freud’s trowel still beside it) to the circular flower bed to the right of the garden and the curved bench and tables on the shaded left-hand side of the garden. The large pine tree at the rear of the garden, was knee-height when Anna Freud first had it planted and the roses, clematis, hortense, plum and almond trees are all original plants from the time of the Freuds first coming to live at Maresfield Gardens.
, London
.
By Underground
Take the Jubilee Line
or Metropolitan Line
to Finchley Road station (please note that this station is in Zone 2). On leaving the station cross Finchley Road and turn right. At Natwest Bank turn left up Trinity Walk. At the top of this path is Maresfield Gardens.
By car
From Central London follow the Finchley Road (A41) north as far as Swiss Cottage
. At the Swiss Cottage
intersection, follow the sign to Hampstead
. This takes you up Fitzjohns Avenue. After the traffic lights at Swiss Cottage
, take the 3rd turning on your left into Nutley Terrace. Maresfield Gardens is the first left off this road.
Hampstead
Hampstead is an area of London, England, north-west of Charing Cross. Part of the London Borough of Camden in Inner London, it is known for its intellectual, liberal, artistic, musical and literary associations and for Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland...
, was the home of Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
and his family when they escaped Nazi annexation of Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
in 1938. It remained the family home until Anna Freud
Anna Freud
Anna Freud was the sixth and last child of Sigmund and Martha Freud. Born in Vienna, she followed the path of her father and contributed to the newly born field of psychoanalysis...
, the youngest daughter, died in 1982. The centrepiece of the museum is Freud's study, preserved just as it was during his lifetime. The Freud Museum commemorates and elucidates the work of Sigmund and Anna Freud and maintains their working environment.
The museum is open to the public Wednesday to Sunday, 12:00 - 17:00. It also organizes research and publication programmes and it has an education service which organizes seminars, conferences and special visits to the museum. The museum is a member of the London Museums of Health & Medicine
The London Museums of Health & Medicine
The London Museums of Health & Medicine is an organization that brings together some of the activities of some of the museums in London related to health and medicine...
.
There are two other Freud Museums, one in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
(see here
Sigmund Freud Museum (Vienna)
The Sigmund Freud Museum is located in Freud's former practice and apartment in Vienna, and covers his life story and the history of psychoanalysis.-Museum:...
), and another which has recently opened in Příbor
Príbor
Příbor is a town in the Moravian-Silesian Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 8,800 inhabitants .The town is notable as the birthplace of Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis.-External links: * * * * *...
, the Czech Republic
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....
, in the house where Sigmund Freud was born. The latter was opened by president Václav Klaus
Václav Klaus
Václav Klaus is the second President of the Czech Republic and a former Prime Minister .An economist, he is co-founder of the Civic Democratic Party, the Czech Republic's largest center-right political party. Klaus is a eurosceptic, but he reluctantly endorsed the Lisbon treaty as president of...
and four of Freuďs great-grandsons.
History
In 1938, the founder of psychoanalysisPsychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
, Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
, left Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
after the Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
annexation of Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
(the Anschluss
Anschluss
The Anschluss , also known as the ', was the occupation and annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938....
) and moved to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, taking up residence at 20 Maresfield Gardens in Hampstead, one of London's suburbs. The house had only finished being built in 1920 in the Queen Anne Style
Queen Anne Style architecture
The Queen Anne Style in Britain means either the English Baroque architectural style roughly of the reign of Queen Anne , or a revived form that was popular in the last quarter of the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th century...
. A small sun room in a modern style was added at the rear by Ernst Ludwig Freud
Ernst Ludwig Freud
Ernst Ludwig Freud was an Austrian architect and the youngest son of Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and his German-born wife Martha Bernays....
that same year. Freud was over eighty at this time, and he died the following year, but the house remained in his family
Freud family
The family of Sigmund Freud, the pioneer of psychoanalysis, lived in Austria and Germany until the 1930s before emigrating to England, Canada and the United States...
until his youngest daughter Anna Freud
Anna Freud
Anna Freud was the sixth and last child of Sigmund and Martha Freud. Born in Vienna, she followed the path of her father and contributed to the newly born field of psychoanalysis...
, who was a pioneer of child therapy, died in 1982.
The Freuds were able to move all of their furniture and household effects to London. The star exhibit in the museum is Freud's psychoanalytic couch. There are also Biedermeier
Biedermeier
In Central Europe, the Biedermeier era refers to the middle-class sensibilities of the historical period between 1815, the year of the Congress of Vienna at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, and 1848, the year of the European revolutions...
chests, tables and cupboards, and a collection of 18th century and 19th century Austrian painted country furniture. The museum owns Freud's collection of Egyptian
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh...
, Greek
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
, Roman
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
, and Oriental antiquities, and his reference library. The collection includes a portrait of Freud by Salvador Dalí
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....
.
The Study
Anna Freud
Anna Freud was the sixth and last child of Sigmund and Martha Freud. Born in Vienna, she followed the path of her father and contributed to the newly born field of psychoanalysis...
after her father's death. The bookshelf behind Freud's desk contains some of his favourite authors: not only Goethe and Shakespeare but also Heine
Heine
Heine is a German family name. The name comes from "Heinrich" or the Hebrew "Chayyim" . When mentioned without a first name it usually refers ti the poet Heinrich Heine...
, Multatuli
Multatuli
Eduard Douwes Dekker , better known by his pen name Multatuli , was a Dutch writer famous for his satirical novel, Max Havelaar , which denounced the abuses of colonialism in the Dutch East Indies .-Biography:Dekker was born in Amsterdam...
and Anatole France
Anatole France
Anatole France , born François-Anatole Thibault, , was a French poet, journalist, and novelist. He was born in Paris, and died in Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire. He was a successful novelist, with several best-sellers. Ironic and skeptical, he was considered in his day the ideal French man of letters...
. Freud acknowledged that poets and philosophers had gained insights into the unconscious which psychoanalysis sought to explain systematically. In addition to the books, the library contains various pictures hung as Freud arranged them; these include 'Oedipus and the Riddle of the Sphinx' and 'The Lesson of Dr Charcot' plus photographs of Martha Freud, Lou Andreas-Salomé
Lou Andreas-Salomé
Lou Andreas-Salomé was a Russian-born psychoanalyst and author. Her diverse intellectual interests led to friendships with a broad array of distinguished western luminaries, including Nietzsche, Wagner, Freud, and Rilke.- Early years :Lou Salomé was born in St...
, Yvette Guilbert
Yvette Guilbert
Yvette Guilbert was a French cabaret singer and actress of the Belle Époque.-Biography:...
, Marie Bonaparte, and Ernst von Fleischl.
The room contains the original analytic couch brought from Berggasse 19 on which patients would recline comfortably while Freud, out of sight in the green tub chair, listened to their 'free association.' They were asked to say everything that came to mind without consciously sifting or selecting information. This method became a foundation upon which psychoanalysis was built.
Antiquities
The Study is filled with antiquities from ancient GreeceGreece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
, Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
and the Orient
Orient
The Orient means "the East." It is a traditional designation for anything that belongs to the Eastern world or the Far East, in relation to Europe. In English it is a metonym that means various parts of Asia.- Derivation :...
. Freud visited many archaeological sites (though not Egypt) but most of the collection was acquired from dealers in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
. He confessed that his passion for collecting was second in intensity only to his addiction to cigars. Yet the importance of the collection is also evident in Freud's use of archaeology as a metaphor for psychoanalysis. One example of this is Freud's explanation to a patient that conscious material 'wears away' while what is unconscious is relatively unchanging: "I illustrated my remarks by pointing to the antique objects about my room. They were, in fact, I said, only objects found in a tomb, and their burial had been their preservation."
Exhibition Room
There is a temporary exhibitions room which hosts alternate contemporary art and Freud themed exhibitions. Art installations often use several rooms within the museum, such as Uli Eigne’s notable exhibition A Visit to Freud’s. A full list of past and forthcoming exhibitions can be found here.Garden
When Freud wrote “We have it incomparably better than at Berggasse and even than Grinzing”, he wasn’t just comparing favourably the spacious rooms with large windows to the dark small apartments in Vienna. Both Sigmund and Anna Freud loved the garden, which is still meticulously maintained, and contains many of the same plants of which Freud was so fond. The garden’s alterations with the changing seasons, reflected his own interests and stages in life, as did the classical artefacts Dr Freud had on his desk.The garden today is largely as Freud would have known it, from the terracotta flower pot, containing a red geranium (with Anna Freud’s trowel still beside it) to the circular flower bed to the right of the garden and the curved bench and tables on the shaded left-hand side of the garden. The large pine tree at the rear of the garden, was knee-height when Anna Freud first had it planted and the roses, clematis, hortense, plum and almond trees are all original plants from the time of the Freuds first coming to live at Maresfield Gardens.
Location
The Freud Museum is situated at 20 Maresfield Gardens in HampsteadHampstead
Hampstead is an area of London, England, north-west of Charing Cross. Part of the London Borough of Camden in Inner London, it is known for its intellectual, liberal, artistic, musical and literary associations and for Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
.
By Underground
Take the Jubilee Line
Jubilee Line
The Jubilee line is a line on the London Underground , in the United Kingdom. It was built in two major sections—initially to Charing Cross, in central London, and later extended, in 1999, to Stratford, in east London. The later stations are larger and have special safety features, both aspects...
or Metropolitan Line
Metropolitan Line
The Metropolitan line is part of the London Underground. It is coloured in Transport for London's Corporate Magenta on the Tube map and in other branding. It was the first underground railway in the world, opening as the Metropolitan Railway on 10 January 1863...
to Finchley Road station (please note that this station is in Zone 2). On leaving the station cross Finchley Road and turn right. At Natwest Bank turn left up Trinity Walk. At the top of this path is Maresfield Gardens.
By car
From Central London follow the Finchley Road (A41) north as far as Swiss Cottage
Swiss Cottage
Swiss Cottage is a district of the London Borough of Camden in London, England. Thedistrict is located north-west of Charing Cross. It is centred on the junction of Avenue Road and Finchley Road and is the location of Swiss Cottage tube station.-Etymology:...
. At the Swiss Cottage
Swiss Cottage
Swiss Cottage is a district of the London Borough of Camden in London, England. Thedistrict is located north-west of Charing Cross. It is centred on the junction of Avenue Road and Finchley Road and is the location of Swiss Cottage tube station.-Etymology:...
intersection, follow the sign to Hampstead
Hampstead
Hampstead is an area of London, England, north-west of Charing Cross. Part of the London Borough of Camden in Inner London, it is known for its intellectual, liberal, artistic, musical and literary associations and for Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland...
. This takes you up Fitzjohns Avenue. After the traffic lights at Swiss Cottage
Swiss Cottage
Swiss Cottage is a district of the London Borough of Camden in London, England. Thedistrict is located north-west of Charing Cross. It is centred on the junction of Avenue Road and Finchley Road and is the location of Swiss Cottage tube station.-Etymology:...
, take the 3rd turning on your left into Nutley Terrace. Maresfield Gardens is the first left off this road.