The story of the Freud family’s emigration from Vienna to London in 1938 is paralleled by another story; the journey of Freud’s collection from Berggasse 19 to 20 Maresfield Gardens. Key to these journeys was Anton Sauerwald, the Nazi Commissar tasked with issuing the documents of ‘non-impediment’ that facilitated their departure.
Recently, The Sigmund Freud Museum Vienna acquired an archive from Anton Sauerwald’s great-niece, which throws considerable light on this obscure period in psychoanalytic history. In this special event, Dr Daniela Finzi, Research Director at the Sigmund Freud Museum Vienna will be in conversation with Prof Gemma Blackshaw (RCA), curator of our current exhibition Housekeeper, to discuss the new Sauerwald archive in the context of the exhibition.
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Speakers:
Daniela Finzi is a literary and cultural scholar and a curator. She has been the Research Director and board member of the Sigmund Freud Foundation since 2016. She has been on the board of aka — Arbeitskreis Kulturanalyse, and a member of the publishing committee of aka/Texte, published by Turia + Kant, since 2014. She is also a member of the editorial board of the Vienna University Press series “Sigmund Freud’s Works. Viennese Interdisciplinary Commentaries”. Her most recent publications include the catalogue Documents of Injustice. The Case of Freud (SFM, 2025), the anthology Thoughts for the Times on Groups and Masses (Leuven University Press, 2025, ed. with Jeanne Wolff Bernstein), the anthologies IT HURTS! Violence against Women in Art and Psychoanalysis (De Gruyter, 2025) and Freud and the Émigré. Austrian Émigrés, Exiles and the Legacy of Psychoanalysis in Britain, 1930s-1970s (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, ed. with Elane Shapira), the catalogue FREUD. Berggasse 19 – Origin of Psychoanalysis (Hatje Cantz, 2020, ed. with Monika Pessler), Dora, Hysteria and Gender (Leuven University Press, 2028, ed. with P. V. Haute and H. Westerink).
Gemma Blackshaw is Professor of Art History at the Royal College of Art (RCA) and Inaugural Academic Associate at the Freud Museum London. A scholar, writer and curator, she has specialised for over two decades on the entangled histories of art, medicine, and care in early 20th-century Austria, publishing widely on what she has termed the country’s ‘clinical modernism’. She co-curated the field-defining exhibition Madness & Modernity: Mental Illness and the Visual Arts in Vienna 1900 (Wellcome, 2009; Wien Museum 2010), which brought little-known artist Erwin Osen’s work to surveys of modern Viennese art, as well as Osen’s only major exhibition to date, The Body Electric: Erwin Osen and Egon Schiele (Leopold Museum, 2021). Working from the RCA where she supports artists with the development of their practice-based research, Blackshaw has come to focus on creative, collaborative approaches to histories of working-class women’s contributions to the culture of Vienna at the end of the 20th century. She is preparing a biography of the chronically-ill music hall artiste Bessie Bruce.
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Complement your visit to the Freud Museum with one of our tours or talks led by staff, volunteers and guest speakers.
The talks are free with your admission ticket. Book your admission ticket now!
The event will be held on the first floor of the Museum during regular opening hours. Unfortunately, the Freud Museum does not currently have step-free access. Advance booking is highly recommended, as capacity is limited.
Concessions/Members/Patrons: Please show proof of eligibility/membership card on arrival.
