FREUDS LOST NEIGHBOURS

A film by Kurt Mayer

The film traces the history of Sigmund Freud's neighbours at Berggasse 19 in Vienna's 9th district from 1938 to today.

While Freud and his closest relatives managed to leave Vienna in time, more than 80 of his immediate Jewish neighbours were deported to extermination camps between 1939 and 1942. Before they were deported, they stopped off at several locations in Vienna.

From a perspective of ongoing concernment this very special film about Vienna starts off at Berggasse 19 and heads for these places, thereby tracing the routes which were used in the course of "Aryanization" right under the eyes of the Viennese people.

Therefore the house in Berggasse 19 – a fixed point in any visitor's programme of Jewish Vienna – is not only the "birthplace of psychoanalysis". It also is a cinematic point of reference for an additional identity-creating culture of remembrance which tries to overcome the post-war consensus of "repression", a concept first described by Freud himself.