“The Case Freud. Documents of Injustice” sheds light on the final months of the Freud family in Nazi Vienna and recounts the events in the years that followed. The systematic dispossession of Sigmund Freud and his brother Alexander Freud is reconstructed in detail. New findings deepen our understanding of the fate and murder of their four sisters—Rosa Freud, Maria Freud, Adolfine Freud, and Pauline Freud—by the Nazi regime.

Unpublished (Perpetrator) Documents
The Sigmund Freud Museum recently succeeded in acquiring previously unknown documents. They come from the estate of the Nazi-appointed “provisional administrator” of the International Psychoanalytic Publishing House, which was owned by Sigmund and Anna Freud.
These documents now form the central element of the exhibition. Viewed together with hundreds of original files, business letters, and lists from the financial administrator responsible for
 

Alexander Freud and the four sisters, they shed light on the legal and financial mechanisms behind the Nazi crimes.
The records also reveal another act of perfidy: the founder of psychoanalysis was able to ship the entire furnishings of his home at Berggasse 19—including his antiquities collection—to London. As a result, his emigration appeared privileged in the eyes of the international public. Behind the scenes, however, the Nazis seized nearly all of his financial resources through the intermediary of the International Psychoanalytic Publishing House; in doing so, his son Martin Freud, the publishing house’s managing director, was placed under massive pressure.
Alexander Freud was the owner of the Allgemeiner Tarif‑Anzeiger. As a freight expert he was internationally recognized and had achieved greater wealth than his more famous brother. He was able to save his life and that of his wife only by surrendering all of his possessions. Penniless, they left Vienna, fled via Zurich to London, and eventually continued on to Canada.
Four of Freud’s five sisters were living in Vienna in 1938—no escape could be arranged for them. They were forced out of their homes, placed in a “collective apartment,” robbed, deported, and murdered in 1942.