Freud Museum - History

History

In 1938, the founder of psychoanalysis, 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.