The Freud Case: New Exhibition Sheds Light on Nazi Injustice and the Fate of the Family
A new special exhibition at the Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna, “The Freud Case: Documents of Injustice,” will shed light on the harrowing history of the family of the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, after the Nazis seized power in 1938, starting on October 24.
The story of the Freud family after the Nazis seized power in 1938: this is the subject of a new exhibition at the Sigmund Freud Museum. / Picture: © Wikimedia Commons / C.Stadler/Bwag / CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)
Entitled “Robbed, Expelled, Murdered,” the exhibition focuses on systematic persecution and expropriation, with particular emphasis on the tragic fate of Sigmund Freud's four sisters. The exhibition will be on display at Berggasse 19 until November 2026.
From exile to murder
While Sigmund Freud and his brother Alexander managed to flee Austria—Sigmund Freud emigrated to London on June 4, 1938, Alexander Freud also fled and died in Toronto, Canada, in 1943—the Nazi regime murdered their four sisters.
Curators Daniela Finzi and Johanna Frei, in collaboration with numerous descendants, have processed numerous new documents that illustrate the “suffering and helplessness” of the extended family. The story of Sigmund Freud had already been documented, but the fate of the extended family had been less “tangible.” That has now changed. The systematic robbery of Sigmund Freud and his brother Alexander, as well as the murder of their four sisters, Rosa, Maria, Adolfine, and Pauline, is traced in detail.
The four sisters—Rosa Graf (née Freud), Marie Freud, Pauline Winternitz (née Freud), and Adolfine Freud—were deported from Vienna in 1942 and murdered in Nazi concentration or extermination camps. Maria, Rosa, and Pauline died in Treblinka, while Adolfine died in Theresienstadt.
Sensational find: lost Freud portrait
A spectacular aspect of the exhibition is the identification of a long-lost portrait of Sigmund Freud by the painter Wilhelm Victor Krausz, which Alexander Freud had to leave behind in his apartment on Biberstraße. This painting, which had been considered lost since 1940, was identified as the original in the course of research for the exhibition.
The portrait, which was acquired by the Friends of the Jewish Museum Vienna in 2019, had previously been considered a studio copy. A new expert assessment, based on a black-and-white photograph from Alexander Freud's former apartment, led to the conclusion that it was most likely the original and thus looted art from Alexander Freud's “Aryanized” property.
The Jewish Museum Vienna, which has the painting in its permanent collection, has now loaned the neo-original to the Freud Museum for the duration of the special exhibition. Director Barbara Staudinger explained that research by other institutions is constantly yielding new findings. The case of the portrait will now be handed over to the Vienna Restitution Commission to examine a possible return to Alexander Freud's descendants.
A place of remembrance
The exhibition is being held in the original premises at Berggasse 19, where Sigmund Freud lived and practiced for 47 years. The deliberate space where Freud's famous couch once stood refers to his forced flight into exile in London and serves as a “reference to the dark course of history,” as director Monika Pessler explains. The new special exhibition now adds further painful details about the fate of a family destroyed by the Nazis to this space.