Edmund Engelman

Following harassment by Nazi authorities, including a break-in in his home and the detention of his daughter Anna, Freud received permission in May 1938 to leave Austria through diplomatic intervention and payment of a "fugitive tax." Freud's associate August Aichhorn met with Engelman at the Café Museum on Karlsplatz to propose that as Freud's family prepared to emigrate to London, the photographer take pictures of Freud's working and living quarters which had been located at Berggasse 19 since 1891. In 1933 Engelman had met Aichhorn, a fellow Social Democrat with whom he shared political and cultural interests. Aichhorn was a member of Freud's inner circle, a lay analyst and the author of the groundbreaking book Wayward Youth (1925). He specialized in the psychological problems of children and founded a treatment center for juvenile delinquents. Aichhorn wanted the photographs of Berggasse 19 to record for posterity the birthplace of psychoanalysis. At the same time, as Aichhorn later indicated in a letter to Austrian psychoanalyst Kurt R. Eissler, he intended that Engelman's photographs would, in a post-Nazi era, provide a blueprint for the creation of a Freud Museum in the Berggasse building. Aichhorn warned Engelman that some danger was involved, and asked that no flash equipment be used that might draw attention, since Freud's apartment was under continuous surveillance by the Gestapo. Aichhorn drew up a floor plan, and asked Engelman to proceed with the understanding that the elderly and ill Freud would not be disturbed. Over a four-day period, in May 1938, Engelman—inch-by-inch, wall-by-wall—took a total of 106 images, 76 taken with a Leica camera, 30 with a Rolleiflex. Engelman sought to take pictures from Freud's perspective: "I wanted to see things the way Freud saw them, with his own eyes, during the long hours of his treatment sessions and as he sat writing." The images ranged from the outside of the building bedecked with swastika flags and the door with Freud's office hours to the treatment room containing the famed couch, from Freud's vast collection of thousands of antiquities to the family's more spartan private quarters, including Anna's room with a large portrait of her father over her bed. We see Freud working at his desk on his last book, Moses and Monotheism, as well as the examination room where Freud received treatment for oral cancer. On the third day, Engelman unexpectedly encountered Freud, who agreed to pose for pictures. Engelman also took portraits of Freud's wife and their daughter Anna. In addition, he took photographs of all three to be used for their passports. Engelman gave Freud an album made up of a selection of photographs he had taken. Freud, in turn, signed an enlarged portrait for the photographer with the inscription, "Herzlichen Dank dem Kunstler—Freud" ("Heartfelt Thanks to the Artist—Freud"). When Engelman departed from Vienna for France on January 1, 1939, he left the Freud negatives with August Aichhorn. After the war, he sought to locate Aichhorn, only to learn that he had died in 1949. After his death Aichhorn's former secretary had sent the negatives to Anna Freud. In 1952, Engelman traveled to Anna Freud at 20 Maresfield Gardens in London, where she returned the negatives to him. Engelman was given a tour of the Freud residence, where Sigmund Freud had died in 1939. "I was moved," Engelman later recalled, "to see once more the beautiful pieces of art and furniture which I had last seen under such different circumstances." As Engelman created a new life in the U.S., he gave little thought to his photographs of Berggasse 19. He later explained, "The fact that the Austrians showed so little interest in Freud was probably the reason I did not expect great interest for him in the USA, and so my negatives just sat in my desk for years." Individual photographs, usually of Freud's couch, occasionally appeared accompanying articles on psychoanalysis in the press or in textbooks and biographies of Freud. Wider appreciation of the historical and cultural significance of the body of photographs as a whole was prompted by an exhibit in September and October 1973 of fifty-nine photographs in large format at Guild Hall, in East Hampton, New York, where Engelman had a summer residence. As noted in a lengthy review in The New York Times, many of the photographs had never been seen before. The exhibit was said to have "reverberated worldwide," as the Gallery Association of New York State circulated the show to museums, galleries and analytical societies throughout the U.S. and Europe. 1974 the Jewish Museum in New York mounted an exhibit of Engelman's photographs with emphasis on what they revealed about Freud's vast collection of archeological artifacts. Entitled "Berggasse 19: The Office and Antiquities of Dr. Sigmund Freud," the show was curated by the psychoanalyst and author Rita M. Ransohoff. Also in 1974, Gene Friedman directed a short documentary, "Sigmund Freud: His Offices and Home, Vienna, 1938," narrated by Eli Wallach and featuring interviews with Engelman. Growing interest prompted by the museum exhibits led to a comprehensive publication of Engelman's photographs in book form. In 1976, Basic Books, at the instigation of its president and publisher, Erwin A. Glikes, published "Berggasse 19: Sigmund Freud's Home and Offices, Vienna 1938". The large-format book contained 54 photographs, detailed captions for each image by Rita M. Ransohoff, a memoir by Engelman, and an essay by the cultural historian Peter Gay. Gay wrote of the photographs: "They help to fill out a puzzle from which too many pieces are missing. They let us walk through Freud's rooms, sit at his desk, and contemplate, almost through his eyes, the objects he collected and cherished. By themselves these photographs are like a manifest dream: rare and fascinating raw material requiring interpretation." The book received the Carey-Thomas Award from Publishers Weekly for "a distinguished project of book publishing". German and French editions of the Basic Books edition of Berggasse 19 followed. Beginning in 1993, new editions were issued under the auspices of the Freud Museum in Vienna with an introduction by Inge Scholz-Strasser, director of the Freud Museum in Vienna, which replaced the essay by Peter Gay and the notes of Rita Ransohoff. Engelman's pictures are prominently displayed at the Freud Museum in Vienna, which was only established in 1971. Almost all of the contents captured in the photographs—the famous couch, other furniture, books, pictures and the large collection of antiquities—remains in England's Freud Museum, located in Freud's final residence in London. Professor Diana Fuss has written that "The photographs of Berggasse 19, originally taken for the postwar construction of a Freud museum, have themselves become the museum, miniature sites of preservation and display." The photographs, following their wider dissemination in exhibits and book form, have enabled scholars to deepen knowledge of the relationship between archeology and psychoanalysis and other elements of Freud's thought. "Although generally regarded for their documentary quality," Dr. Arnold Werner emphasized, "Engelman's photographs also have artistic merit. They evoke a lost era and culture and have wonderful composition, a savvy blending of natural light sources, and a great tonal range."