Bruce Barber
In December 2000 I was invited to Vienna
to participate in a symposium on art and activism
titled Was Tun (What to Do). The day
after the conference concluded I decided to
visit the Freud Museum at 19 Berggasse (Mountain
Lane), which for those who know Vienna, is
off the Ringstrasse in the ninth district,
approximately two blocks behind the Sigmund
Freud Memorial Park. Although this was my
second time in Vienna, it was my first visit
to the Freud Museum, coinciding, fortuitously,
I should say, with my birthday on December
11. I initially had some difficulty finding
the museum, but after asking a shopkeeper
I learned that the location of Berggasse was
"recht und recht" which turned out
to be a mere block away. I knew that I was
close to the Museum when I spied a sign on
the other side of the street reading, somewhat
predictably, "Sigmund Freud Cafe."
Crossing the street I found the fine looking
double doors to the building that housed the
Freud Museum. Opening the right hand door,
I entered the spacious illuminated foyer and
then walked up the few stairs to the landing,
stopping briefly to inspect the hand worn
banister then continued up the next two flights
of stairs to the Museum on the next floor.
Arriving at the Museum entrance, I pushed
the doorbell, heard the sound of a buzzer
inside and then quick footsteps to the door
which soon opened to reveal an attractive
brunette fraulein. After welcoming me with
a warm smile that exposed her perfect teeth,
she directed me to hang my coat and cap in
the voluminous closet opposite the entrance
doorway, then politely requested the entrance
fee, which if I remember correctly, was 60.-
Austrian schillings (ATS). She then offered
me the choice of the English or German audio
guide and a brochure containing a simple floor
plan of the rooms.
It was 10.30 a.m. and there were very few
visitors to the Museum at this time of the
morning. In fact, I was the sole occupant
in most of the rooms. Attaching the audio
guide earphone to my ears I began my tour
at the Entrance identified on the plan, spending
some time inspecting the wooden rail with
coat hooks, Freud's walking cane (inventory
item 324A), his hat (item 324B), casual cap
(324D) and travel trunk which were carefully
displayed there. From the entrance I ventured
into the waiting room, taking time to view,
with the aid of my audio guide, each of the
many framed images on the wall and the artifacts
displayed museum fashion in the beautiful
cantilevered glass cabinet designed by Wolfgang
Tscapeller, and installed in 1993. After circumnavigating
the hallway and waiting room I entered Freud's
Consulting Room, the space where presumably
the analyst first met his most famous patients,
the Rat Man, the Wolf Man and Dora. This again
was filled with photographs and documents
from Freud's early life, facsimiles of publications
and artifacts from his professional practice
such as his microtome, a precision instrument
for making thin slices of material for microscope
slides. My attention was drawn to the reproductions
of Oedipus and the Sphinx, 1808, the
painting by Jean Auguste-Dominique Ingres
that according to my audio guide,
was placed in the same spot as an engraving
of the painting used to hang. This was adjacent
to the copy of the plaster cast of the classical
relief fragment Gradiva, the source
of Freud’s essay, Delusions and Dreams
in Jensen’s Gradiva (1906), and
many subsequent dissertations on obsession
and repression by the Surrealists.
On the wall opposite hung a reproduction
of Dr. Charcot a la Saltpetriere (La
lecon clinique du Dr. Charcot) by P.A
Brouillet (1887), again in precisely the same
spot that had previously been occupied by
a lithograph of the original. I then walked
into Freud's Study, possibly the most important
place in this apartment, and likely the one
in which over thirty years, he spent the most
hours. Moving slowly from exhibit to exhibit
I noted with satisfaction the small table
(138A), the brass cigar box (138B), and the
famous copies from first edition book covers
in their original German of Freud's work:
Studien uber Hysteria(Studies on
Hysteria, 1895); Die Traumdeutung(The
Interpretation of Dreams, 1900);
Three essays on the theory of sexuality(1905);
and one of my favorites, Der Witz und seine
Bezeihung zum Unbewussten(Jokes and
their relation to the unconscious,1905).
The room was full of reproductions, such that
one began to question the authenticity of
the original items in the room, the cigar
box and the table, until, that is, I reached
the space that a large photograph on the wall,
taken in 1938 by Edmund Engelman, indicated
his desk should be, and noticed a mirror fixed
to the window sash in exactly the same spot
it occupied in a photo of Freud in his study
at the age of 81 (1937), one year before his
hurried exit from Vienna as a result of the
Nazi annexation of Austria to the Third Reich.
Elegantly contained in an ornamental openwork
brass frame, this mirror (inventory item #243),
had been given to Freud as a birthday gift
from his daughter Anna, and was among the
prized possessions that accompanied him to
London during his exile of 1938. When the
Freud museum was instituted, Anna Freud returned
this and other important artifacts to the
study they had occupied for over 30 years,
leaving the famous couch and other consulting
room and study furniture in London. I gazed
into this mirror, mesmerized by its solidity
in this cornucopia of simulacra. A paradox!
I leaned slowly towards his mirror and fixed
my eyes where I supposed his laconic gaze
must have rested on countless occasions during
his afternoon reveries. On these occasions
he would probably adjust his glasses, perhaps
clip and light another cigar or arrest his
thoughts to gaze out through the large windowpanes
down into the courtyard below. He would survey
from this vantage the windows of the wall
of apartment buildings on the opposite side
of the yard and perhaps ruminate on the social
relations being performed within.
Freud's mirror. My gaze was trapped in this
small mirror, its reflections projecting,
inflecting so much history. I am not sure
for how long I contemplated his mirror. Someone
coming into the room at that moment may have
assumed that I was a pathological narcissist.
I wondered how many other visitors to the
Freud Museum had engaged in this sacrilegious
and potentially dangerous act. Among the many
reflection/ death superstitions there is one
in India that warns against looking into the
face of a mirror that belonged to another
person, for your soul may become trapped and
manipulated by the dead host. Slowly, reluctantly
I averted my eyes from the mirror, travelling
my gaze down to focus upon the warm tones
of the parquet floor and then racking my gaze
slowly like the lens of a movie camera back
up and around the walls of the study. I continued
my journey through the rooms, stopping once
spontaneously - now you may think this odd
- to smella section of wall.
It was good that I was alone. This kind of
behaviour was clearly fetishistic and only
worthy of a celebrity hunter visiting Grauman's
Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. But what was
this? Had I detected in that sliver of a moment
the faint odour of stale cigar smoke? Could
Freud's tobacco smells have remained imbedded
in the cracks and crevices of this room for
the past sixty years? Or was this merely the
residue of the former occupants after the
Freud family departed in haste for London.
Could it be the museum curator's drive to
animate Freud's life by blowing cigar smoke
into the room at regular intervals perhaps?
Surely, this couldn't be so? My imagination
was playing tricks. Dismissing these radical
Delilloean thoughts from my mind, I returned
to review the photographs in the study, pausing
for some time to admire the famous reproduction
of Jusepe de Ribera's The Club Foot(Paris,
Louvre), which Freud had referred to in his
Psychopathology of Everyday Life. I
spent another half-hour in the video room
viewing the tape Freud 1930-1939.Then
another fifteen minutes or so checking out
the museum gift-shop, where I purchased three
books and several postcards which were neatly
packaged into a paper carrying bag excellently
printed with the cover of Freud's Three
Essays on Sexuality.
And then, feeling a slight pang of hunger,
I decided to seek out a nearby cafe for a
bowl of soup, perhaps a coffee, Viennese style,
with a glass of water and piece of apfelstrudel.
Now, descending the stairs a rather strange
thing happened, perhaps the result of my exhaustion
from the conference or, I must confess, the
previous evening's somewhat excessive intake
of red wine. My right foot somehow missed
the second to last step, and overcompensating,
I slipped and lurched headlong into the foyer
below, managing to break my fall somehow with
my left arm. As I picked myself up, berating
myself for my carelessness, I felt a searing
pain in my right foot. Scheise! A broken bone,
pulled muscle or torn ligament? I stood there
momentarily stunned, felt my foot around the
ankle and toes to see if there was anything
broken or out of joint and detecting nothing
amiss, I limped slowly toward the front door.
I stood there to catch my breath, then turning
the door handle, opened one side of the double
doors and shuffled out into the street. Hobbling
with some difficulty, I found an artfully
illuminated cafe two streets north of Bergasse,
off Liechtensteinstrasse, sat down with relief
and decided lunch was in order. I spent the
next forty minutes or so having lunch, coffee,
nursing my wounded foot and reading my Vienna
tourist guide. Then around 2.00 p.m. I continued
my tour around the Ringstrasse. At this point
I was struck by the extreme irony of the situation.
For the next three hours my flaneur’s
derivearound Vienna was accomplished
with an Oedipal limp! Of course the full significance
of my Viennese misadventure was not evident
to me until began to reflect on it in this
form. Mirror, cigar smoke, clubbed foot...Oedipus...the
riddles of the Sphinx? I clearly had some
unfinished family business to attend to.
