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: https://www.freud-museum.at/en/exhibitions-program/program (click here to register)