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Freud's Exiles

This exhibition shows how two pseudo-ideologies, nationalism and antisemitism, affected Freud’s life.

Starts on23/04/2008
at09:00
Ends on20/12/2008
at17:00
CategoryArts and Culture
Entry PriceTBC
VenueFreud Museum
Venue Address20 Maresfield Gardens
Town or CityLondon
RegionLondon
Contact Telephone020 7435 2002
Contact Email AddressNot available

In 1938, driven by the Nazis from his home in Vienna, at the age of 82 Freud became a "displaced person".

He found refuge in England. But did he also find peace in London?
This exhibition shows how two pseudo-ideologies, nationalism and antisemitism, affected Freud's life.

Contemporary documents and objects - a visitors' notebook, a Nazi tax document, letters and items from his collection of antiquities illustrate his sense of nationality and tell the story of his life-long confrontation with antisemitism, his flight from the Nazis and his final year in London.

In exile he completed a final work, Moses and Monotheism, which has intrigued and baffled readers ever since. In dreams images are displaced and condensed. In that book the protagonist Moses shifts shape like a dream figure - but the dream was world history.
In his final home at Maresfield Gardens we see Freud on film, apparently enjoying a garden party.

But appearances are, as always, deceptive.

The only recording of his voice ends the film and his last sentence is: "But the struggle is not yet over."

What was Freud's "promised land"? As far as official nationality was concerned, he was born a "Mosaic" (i.e. Jewish) Austro-Hungarian and he died a stateless refugee - nominally German and an "enemy alien". He had long dreamed of adopting British nationality but that wish remained unfulfilled.