Intrigued by a Freudian trip

Walking through the front door at Berggasse 19, in Vienna's 6th district, feels not unlike walking into any well-maintained historic apartment building in any area of the city.

This is not any old Viennese apartment building, however, but one of the city's most famous addresses.

For nearly half a century, Berggasse 19 was the home and workplace of the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud.

Freud moved into the building in 1891 and remained here for 47 years with his wife Martha, their six children, Martha's sister Minna (rumoured to have been Freud's mistress) and two housekeepers.

Walking through the rooms today, they seem rather modest to have housed 11 people.

Even so, Freud would have likely never left if it hadn't been for the rise of nazism, which forced him into exile in 1938, aged in his 80s and suffering from terminal cancer.

We're shown around today by Peter Nomaier, who works for the Sigmund Freud Foundation, which runs the museum and promotes the study of Freud's life and work.

We go first into the entrance hall, which still has a nameplate reading "Prof. Dr Freud" on the wall.

From here, it's into the waiting room, which was reconstructed from photographs taken shortly before the Freuds were forced into exile.

Peter tells us this is the only room with its complete set of original furnishings, sent back from London by Freud's beloved youngest daughter Anna: comfortable-looking armchairs, certificates and honorary degrees hung on the walls.

It feels quite cosy, more like a family living room than a part of a medical practice.

The Waiting Room at Sigmund Freud's Practice / Picture: Florian Lierzer

From here, patients would be called into Freud's consulting room, which had a secret exit door to allow patients to leave their analysis sessions discreetly.

Today both the consulting room and Freud's study, where he wrote his books, house the museum's permanent exhibition of photographs, documents and objects connected with the doctor's life.

A secular Jew, Freud was optimistic to the point of delusion that he and his family could remain in Vienna despite the nazi threat.

When the nazis included his works in the mass book burnings of 1933, he merely quipped: "What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burnt me; nowadays they are burning my books." (His biographer Peter Gay observes this "must have been the least prescient bon mot he ever made".)

Later the same year, Freud wrote to his nephew that "we are determined to stick it out here to the last". His health failing, he hoped for nothing more than to die in peace at home.

It was not until Anna, herself a successful child psychoanalyst, was arrested and interrogated by the Gestapo that he resolved to leave.

This was easier said than done and high-level intervention was required.

The Freuds' case was taken up by the American ambassador to Berlin at the request of President Roosevelt, and his friend Marie Bonaparte, wife of Prince George of Greece, provided substantial financial support before they were permitted to flee.

The Freuds left Vienna on June 4, 1938 and arrived in London via France two days later. "The triumphant feeling of liberation is mingled too strongly with mourning," Freud wrote of his exile, "for one had still very much loved the prison from which one was released."

The doctor continued seeing patients as his health declined. He died in September 1939.

Speaking to Peter provides a very human context to the plight of Viennese Jews such as Freud leading up to World War II.

As he tells us, there had been a large Jewish population in the city since the Middle Ages and by the early 20th century many Austrian Jewish intellectuals, including Freud, had become emphatically secular.

Among their number were some of the city's most prominent citizens, including more than half of Austria's physicians and dentists.

They were part of the fabric of Viennese life, had history and roots here.

If, like Freud, they did not expect to be driven from their homes, it is in many ways understandable.

Before 1938, about 185,000 Jewish people lived in Vienna; by the end of 1942, only 8102 remained. Of course, those who managed to flee were the lucky ones; more than 65,000 Austrian Jews were murdered in the concentration camps, including four of Freud's five sisters.

Even today, the Viennese Jewish population is estimated to be no more than about 12,000 people in a city of 1.7 million.

After the Freuds left Berggasse 19, it housed Jewish people en route to the concentration camps, as many as 30 people crammed in at once.

It was bought in the 1960s by the city so the museum could be established.

It opened in 1971 with Anna Freud in attendance and has gradually expanded its collection to include tens of thousands of items, books and papers - including a personal note from Marlene Dietrich which came to the museum quite by chance, inserted into a book - plus contemporary art related to psychoanalysis. Approximately 80,000 people now visit each year.

However, one crucial piece of Freud ephemera has never returned to Vienna - his famous consulting couch, which remains at the museum in his former London home along with the contents of his study.

Peter tells us the absence of the couch is symbolic, commemorating the many other people of Jewish ancestry who were forced to flee their city.

Like Freud, so many of them never made it home again.

Gemma Nisbet was a guest of the Vienna Tourist Board.

In Saturday Travel in The Weekend West, Gemma Nisbet explores Vienna's coffee houses.

Admission to the Sigmund Freud Museum is about $11.30 for adults, including an audio guide. freud-museum.at.

For more on visiting Vienna, go to wien.info/en.