EVENT LANGUAGE: ENGLISH & GERMAN
Testimonies from Vienna – A video installation in the Showroom Berggasse 19 offers unique insights into our collective memory: Selected testimonies from Viennese Holocaust survivors demonstrate the enduring impact of history on the present and future. These memories are often tied to places and objects—marked by painful experiences yet also carrying within them longing and hope.
The premiere of this moving historical testimony will be accompanied by a conversation between historian Thomas Kohut and Monika Pessler (Director of the Sigmund Freud Museum) on the relationship between knowledge, historical consciousness, and repression.
Before the screening, renowned experts in psychoanalysis, cultural studies, literature, and history will discuss how we navigate the complex psychological terrain of cultural identity and loss.
Under the title “Transience, Transference, and the Dispossessed“, they will examine the contemporary significance of vanished places, lost rituals, and cultural dispossession—because “History does not repeat itself, but we can learn from it.” (Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, 2017)
EVENT SCHEDULE
4 PM (in English): Panel Discussion “Transience, Transference, and the Dispossessed”
Brigid Doherty, Art Historian, Princeton University/New Jersey
Jane Tillman, Psychoanalyst, Austen Riggs Center/Massachusetts
Daniela Finzi, Literary Scholar, Sigmund Freud Museum/Vienna
Thomas A. Kohut, Historian, Williams College/Massachusetts (Moderator)
6 PM (in German with subtitles): Film Premiere “Testimonies from Vienna” & Discussion
A collaboration with the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University, presented alongside the special exhibition “Documents of Injustice. The Case of Freud” at the Sigmund Freud Museum.
Post-Screening Discussion
Thomas Kohut, Historian, Williams College/Massachusetts
Monika Pessler, Director, Sigmund Freud Museum/Vienna
Registration required. FULLY BOOKED.
Sigmund Freud Museum
Vienna IX, Berggasse 19. This is the address where Sigmund Freud lived and worked for 47 years until he was forced to flee from the Nazi regime in 1938. In 1971 , the Sigmund Freud Museum was founded here, and after extensive renovation and expansion reopened in 2020. Three permanent exhibitions in Freud’s former living and office rooms, an art presentation in the Showroom Berggasse 19 as well as special exhibitions present Freud’s multi-layered cultural legacy: they are dedicated to his life and work, the development of psychoanalysis in theory and practice, and its importance for the fields of society, science, and art. The history of the house at Berggasse 19 and the fates of its occupants are also brought into focus.
FULLY BOOKED: "Witnessing History, Understanding the Present, Learning for the Future"
8 Nov 2025/16:00-19:30H
Sigmund Freud Museum
Berggasse 19, 1090 Wien, Österreich
Registration required
Testimony of Egon and Mina H., born in Vienna, from the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies.
