Freud's escape: Nazi Vienna->London 1938

I have blogged about Sigmund Freud’s (1856-1939) escape from Vienna before, and have visited Freud’s homes in Vienna and in London. Now let's read Andrew Nagorski’s new book, Saving Freud (2022).

Freud's house museum, Vienna

Wiki

 

Austria was led by Catholic politicians who imposed their own Fascism but tried to limit Hitler. Chancellor Engelbert Doll­fuss banned the Nazi Party, only to be assassinated by local Nazis in Jul 1934. Still Freud desperately wanted to believe Doll­fuss’ succ­ess­or that he would continue a policy of ind­ep­end­ence. He believed Austria’s government was basically decent.

Dr Freud’s revol­u­t­ionary insights into the uncharted sub­conscious territ­ory of the human mind SHOULD have prepared him for the dark forces moving towards tyranny and mass murder. In his earlier essay Civilisation and its Discont­ents, he had reflected on the aggressive cruelty that transformed men into sa­vages. Aft­er Hit­ler took power in Germany in 1933, Freud con­cluded the world was becoming an enor­mous prison. Yet as much as he recog­nised these trends, Freud was reluctant to apply them to his own sit­uation. Even when the Nazis created a 1933 bonfire of books by hated authors, including Freud!

book burning by the Nazis, May 1933

celebrated by 70,000 people at Opernplatz Berlin

The Australian

He supported his sons, Oliver (1891–1969) and Ernst (1892–1970), to leave Ber­lin and to move to London in 1933. Life in Germany was clearly impossible, but Sigmund still believed Austria was diff­er­ent. He said it was very un­likely that Aus­tria would ever come under German rule; and even if it did, Aust­ria wouldn’t treat Jews as brutally as the Germans did!

Early in 1938, German soldiers were massing on the Austrian border, about to annex Austria into the Third Reich. Many Jews urgently pl­anned to flee to safety, yet Freud still couldn’t even contemplate leav­ing home. He was 81 years old and very ill with cancer, plus U.K migration quotas remained inflex­ibly tight.

Dr Freud should have been uniq­ue­­ly qualified to understand the dark forces propel­l­ing his world to mass murder and destruction. Why had he failed to leave Vienna when it would have been rel­at­ively easy to do so? Partly be­cause he had spent his life­ claiming he was a-pol­it­­ical. Nazi sturm and drang struck him merely as noise, the outward man­i­festation of messy inner liv­es. Deal with the death drive, he said, and in­sight would return. So Freud stuck to his be­loved cult­ur­ed Vienna, convinced Europe would soon come right.

In mid March 1938, Hitler appeared on the balcony of Vienna’s imper­ial Hof­­burg Palace to announce the Ans­chluss i.e incorporation of Austria into the Third Reich. With Vienna’s streets fill­ed with jub­ilant Nazi sup­p­orters, thugs looted Jewish stores, def­aced synagog­ues and attacked individuals. Then thugs plundered Freud’s pub­lish­ing house, International Psychoanalytic Press.

Everyone in Freud’s circle began a coordinated effort to persuade him to leave Vienna. Especially since these fol­low­ers risked their OWN political capital, personal income and physic­al safety to save him. Anna Freud (1894-1982) had ministered to all her father’s needs while man­aging her own pioneering child psychoanalyst pract­ice. She was dealing with the new Nazi overlords, who were intent on extort­ing as much money as possible from important Jews seeking to emig­rate. She would never have left her dad.

Welsh physician-neurologist Ernest Jones (1879-1958) was a tire­less pro­moter of Freud’s ideas across Europe. When he heard of the threat to Freud, Jones flew to Vien­na and used his con­n­ect­­ions to bend British immigration rules.

American ambassador to France William Bullitt Jr (1891-1967) had been Freud’s patient in the 1920s. Their friendship devel­oped later, through their collaboration on a psycho-biography of Pres Wood­row Wilson. Bullitt stated the U.S required Freud’s safe release.

Max Schur was Freud’s doctor who cared for the cigar-smoker with jaw can­c­er. Max’s loyalty was clear since he had to delay his own family’s exit, waiting for Freud.

Marie Bonaparte, Sigmund Freud, William Bullitt, 

Paris, June 1938.

The Guardian

Marie Bonaparte (1882-1962), great-grandniece of Napoleon and wife of Prince George of Greece and Denmark, had been Freud’s pat­ient be­fore she herself became a psychoanalyst and a dedicated mem­ber of his inner circle. She too rushed to Vienna to be with Freud, paying the steep flight tax the Nazis dem­and­ed of anyone leaving the Reich.

Anton Sauerwald was the Nazi bureaucrat charged with tracking and seiz­ing all of Freud’s assets. The anti-Semitic Sauer­wald did NOT reveal to his Nazi bosses that he’d found evidence of the Freud family’s for­eign holdings; he quietly signed their exit visas. 

They boarded the Orient Express and as the train rolled through Ger­many via Munich and Dachau, tension inten­sified. At 3AM the train approached the frontier where the Ger­man bor­der guards only glan­ced at the docum­ents. The train then crossed the Rhine, entering France with Marie Bonaparte before continuing to London. Free at last!

Britain was good for Freud. In July 1938 the family bought a Hampstead house with a mortgage but by then Freud was too ill to work; a year later he died. Of Freud’s children, Anna and Martin had been taken by the Gestapo, but lived. Freud’s 4 sisters stayed in Austria and were exterm­inated.

Freud's house in Hampstead was turned into a museum in 1986. Well worth visiting.

Freud's home museum in Hampstead, London,

1938

The reader knows that Freud had been the world’s most famous therapist using psycho­analytic in­sight. Nagorski created a group port­rait in a psycho-biographical suspense story about the limits of genius. He told a dram­atic true st­ory about Freud’s last-minute es­cape to Lon­don, with the supportive friends. It was the tale of a great city, a falling empire and rising terror.

But it was not only his physical frailty that had Freud’s trapped inside the Vienna home. So the reader has to ask: was Freud’s bl­indness a form of political ignorance? Or psycholog­ical incompetence eg denial or narcissism? It was Freud’s good fort­une that his most trusted intimates per­ceived the extreme dangers he couldn’t acknowledge. Plus they had the political clout to pull off the in­t­ervention, arriving arrived safely in London in June 1938.

Sigmund's sisters Rosa, Marie, Pauline, Adolfine 

all exterminated in 1942

Holocaust Historical Society

3 good men murdered 1964: Mississippi

In June 1964, Michael Schwerner (from NY) and James Chaney (from MS) worked for the Congress of Rac­ial Equality in Phil­ad­el­phia MS; Andrew Good­man (from NY) was one of the hundreds of college students from acr­oss the country who volunteered to work on voter regist­r­at­ion and Civil Rig­hts in Miss­issippi’s Summer Proj­ect 1964. The 3 men knew their work was dangerous but necessary, given that the local KKK membership was soar­ing.

FBI missing person poster
Goodman 20, Chaney 21, Schwerner 24
June 1964

Schwerner had org­an­is­ed local boycotts of biased businesses and hel­ped with black voter reg­ist­ra­tion in MS. So the KKK was furious, us­ing viol­ence to fight Civil Rights men. Klan memb­ers targ­eted and burned 20 black Mississippi ch­ur­­ch­es in June 1964, inc­luding Nesh­oba Coun­ty's Mt Zion Baptist Church. A mob of armed KKK members descended on a local ch­urch meeting look­ing for Schwerner, but fortunately he’d gone to Ox­ford Ohio that day, to train a group of Freedom Summer volunteers. Instead the KKK tor­ch­ed the church and thump­ed the churchgoers.

The Klan had missed Schwerner, but their trap was set: Schwer­ner, Chaney and Goodman soon headed south, investigating the fire, inter­viewing witnesses and meeting fellow campaigners. After dr­iv­ing to Phil­­ad­el­phia, the 3 men dr­ove towards Mer­id­ian in a station-wagon, to visit the burned Mt Zion. En route, their Congress of Ra­c­ial Eq­uality/CORE station wagon was stop­ped and police arrested them: Chaney was charged with sp­eeding, while Schwerner and Good­man were held for inv­est­igat­ion. Then Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price took them to Phil­ad­elphia gaol!

Price told the 3 men to remain in gaol until a Jus­tice of the Peace calculated their fines. Schwerner asked to make a phone call, but Price denied him and left. Price returned at 10pm, collect­ed Chaney’s fine and told the men to leave the county. They were never seen again

Digging for bodies in a deep farm dam near Philadelphia MS. 

FBI

The case drew national attention, in part because Schwerner and Good­man were white Northerners. But authorities claimed that the disappear­ance of the 3 workers could have been a Civil Rights Movement publicity stunt. Worst still, in 1964 Mississippi was the only state without a cen­tral FBI office, so in June, 200+ agents had to travel from the New Orl­eans office inst­ead! These agents found the destroyed CORE station wagon!!

After 6 weeks searching for the 3 bodies, a Highway Patrol of­f­icer sent invest­ig­ators to a deep earthen dam on a Philad­elphia farm where the FBI found them. Throughout 1964, state and local law en­forc­e­ment did not pur­sue the crime, claiming insufficient evid­ence, but the FBI continued. In June 1964, Klansman Jam­es Jordan tortured-shot Chaney and Klansman Wayne Roberts tortured-shot Sch­w­ern­er & Goodman. The killers loaded the bodies in­to the CORE stat­ion­-wagon, then buried the bodies in the earthen dam.

In July investigators combed Mississippi’s woods and rivers, even­t­ually finding 8 African American male skeletons. Three were ident­if­ied as 19 year old students who were kidnapped & murdered in May 1964. But nothing was recorded about the 5 other bodies. Black deaths presumably mattered less.

Deputy Sheriff Price and Sheriff Rainey at arraignment hearing in 1964 

Not showing much respect for the court,  

UMKC

Because murder was a state crime, the Federal Govern­ment couldn’t br­ing charges. So in Dec, the Justice Dept charged 21 men with cons­pir­ing to violate Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman’s civil rights. Pro­s­ec­u­t­ors brought the charges before a federal grand jury, ind­ict­ing 18 men in Jan 1965. But presiding Judge Wil­l­iam Cox dismissed the charg­es against most defendants, main­taining that the law applied only to law enforcement officers. The prosecution appeal­ed, and in 1966 the Sup­reme Court reinstated the charges, ruling the law app­lied to law enforcement officials AND civilians.

In Feb 1967 a Federal Grand Jury re-indicted the men, and in Oct the trial began in segregationist Judge Cox’s court. As the trial proceeded, the prosecution read the 1964 con­fessions of Klan members Hor­ace Barnette & James Jordan: After leaving Schwern­er, Chaney and Goodman in Phil­ad­el­phia’s gaol, Price called Baptist Min­ister Ed­gar Ray Kil­l­en, a local KKK leader. Kil­len directed Klansmen to gather in Philadelphia and when the KKK cars left Philadelphia, Price released the Civ­il Rights workers from gaol and ordered them gone. He then chased the CORE station wagon.

Edgar Killen (L) and Cecil Price (R) happily awaited their verdicts

Killen was correct... he walked. Price was found guilty. 1967

After years of court battles, 7 of the 18 defendants were found guil­ty in Oct 1967 including Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price and Samuel Bow­ers, Imperial Wizard of Mississippi’s White Knights of the KKK, but none on mur­der ch­arges. One major con­spirator, Rev Edgar Killen, went free after a juror could NOT convict any Bap­tist preacher. But in the long run, the Klan’s homicidal ways were less successful. The murders gal­van­ised the nation and provided impetus for the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 in July. In 1970 the convicted men each received a sentence of 3-10 years.

Was it true that in 1980 Ronald Reagan launched his el­ection campaign lauding States’ Rights near Philadelphia MS, within walking distance from where the 3 bodies had been buried?

In 1998 a reporter for a Jackson newspaper publ­ish­ed excerpts from a 1984 interview with Imperial Wizard Bow­ers where he spoke proudly ab­out the 3 murders and Rev Kil­len’s responsibility. This interview, sealed till Bowers’ death, is now freely avail­able. 

Historical marker at Mt Zion Church in Neshoba County MI
CBS

In 1999, MS Attorney General Michael Moore reopened the case, using the FBI’s original investig­ation’s records. In Jan 2005, a grand jury ch­arged Rev Killen with murder. Even then, the grand jury found in­suf­­f­icient evid­ence for a murder con­v­ic­tion. On the 41st anniversary of his crime, Rev Killen was found guil­ty of man­sl­aughter and sent­en­ced to 60 years gaol, dying in com­fort­ aged 93.

Photo credits: CBS News

 

 

Medical clowns help patients & save lives.

Clown with young child in bed, ? hospital
Biomedical Science

Medical clowns in a U.S hospital health-care team started when a professional clown at NY’s Big Apple Circus founded Clown Care in 1986. Cl­own­ing became a well-established way of helping patients of all ages during their recov­ery. Clowning in health-care sett­ings called for a special way of inter­acting with patients due to the variety of medical and emot­ional aspects in­volved; so it required empathy for each pat­ient’s illness & psych­ol­ogical condition. Clown doctors had to be able to integrate artistic skills with their patients eg mime and magic, useful in eliciting positive emotions.

They investigated the effects of clown intervention in a large variety of clinical British settings: 

1) clown intervent­ion induced positive em­otions, enhanced patients’ well-being, red­uced psychol­ogical sym­ptoms and emotional react­iv­ity, and prompted a decrease in negative emotions eg anxiety. 

2) clown doctors were also well-perceived by relatives and healthcare staff, and their pres­en­ce ap­peared to be useful in creating a lighter atmosphere in hospital.

Dr Patch Adams with patient and wife, Ogden Medical Centre, UT

Adams is a physician, clown and activist

St Lake Tribune.

Studies demonstrated the positive effects of medical clowns on the pre-procedural emotional state prior to the medical interventions or during anaesthesia, on general well-being during hospitalisat­ion, compliance with physical exams, adherence to therapy and on treatment outcomes.

Now for some details. Israel's Dream Doctors was founded in 2002, with 100+ members who work together with medical teams in 33 Israeli me­d­ical centres. Th­ese sal­­aried medical clowns visited patients, acc­ompanying doctors on rounds, sh­ow­ing sil­liness in unhappy set­­tings. Their wacky appearance made the cl­owns the non-intimidating members of the med­ical team. Since the war last year, the clowns have often vis­it­ed comm­unities of traumatised Israeli ref­ug­ees.

Soon after Oct 2023 massacre, medical clown Perla dr­ove from Jerus­alem to Eilat where members of the destroyed kibb­utz­im near Gaza were ev­acuated. She’d been a medical clown for 15 years, work­ing in Jer­usal­em’s Shaare Zedek Hospital, accom­p­­any­ing very ill pat­­ients. De­spite the silly cos­tume and nose, her the­r­ape­u­tic cl­­owning was serious, lift­ing traumatised evacuees’ spirits.

Perla wore a bright outfit, hair flowers, striped knee socks and red nose. She was visiting a lad in Sha­are Zedek’s child­ren’s ward who had to get out of bed post-surgery, but refused. Perla whizzed around the bed, and in a rap­id-fire patter compl­ained loudly to the child about mothers, doct­ors, nurses and boys who didn't want to get up. Soon the boy was moving down the corridor in his wheel­chair, smiling.

In the intensive care ward, a 3-year-old girl was recovering from brain surgery. Perla had been told that the child needed stim­ulation before responding to the outside world. Placing her head on the bed next to the child’s face and singing a song, she tried to get the little girl to react. Throughout the morning she went back to the same child, each time eliciting a reaction. Perla Clown was bring­ing her energy.

Dressed in striped pants, col­ourful shirt, outsized floppy shoes, ridiculous hat and a red nose, Victor’s appearance was striking in the children’s wards Soroka Hospit­al Beer­sheba. He used a joking patter in various lan­guages to every­one he saw: doctors, secr­et­aries, clean­ers. A professional magic­ian, mime artist, story teller and com­edian, Vic­tor acknowledged that some of the chil­d­ren looked terrif­ied when he first entered but they were soon happily grinning. Vic­t­or also worked as a medical clown in Adi Negev, the rehabilit­at­ion village for severely disab­led children and adults. Being in ex­t­reme pain was not unusual, but since the terrorism, it had been much worse; refugee children had lost many family members.

Prof Sancho and teens at Emek Medical Centre Afula
Emek Medical Centre, Israel

A clown listened and tried to be open-minded and open-hearted, said medical clown Piccolo 42, who was also at Shaare Zedek Medical Cen­tre. His clowning wasn’t insane; the clowns were actually like an island of sanity. A patient thought that if a clown was here, life might be okay. If they let a clown into oper­ating rooms, it might be normal. The clown’s mere presence had an influence on the patients and on the staff.

Dream Doctors were all professional performers before going through the extensive training to become medical clowns. That exp­er­ience hel­ped them establish an instant rapport with patients, even in fr­ight­ening situations. One of the Dream Doctors’ projects was the Cl­­ownbulance, a specially outfitted colourful vehicle which prov­ided very sick children a chance to briefly escape their pain­ful hosp­it­al treat­ments. The child made a wish eg going to a football game, and Clownbulance made it happen.


Clown being used to treat dementia
YouTube

This was a very specific kind of training, said Dream Doctors Dir­ec­tor. In 2006, there were 25 people who earned acad­emic degrees in medical clowning from Haifa Uni. Recently a new acad­emic pr­o­gramme was launched at Assaf Harofeh Hospital, unlike in any other count­ry. And while Dream Doctors were salaried professionals, an Is­raeli NGO Medical Clown Association also took on c500 volunt­eers. After a year-long paid course, volunteers visited psych­ia­tric hospit­als, nursing homes, ref­ugee centres and hospit­als, usu­ally working in pairs. The volunt­eers dedicated themselves to uplifting people’s sp­irits in difficult situations, including supporting is­ol­ated peop­le at home.

Israel did­n’t invent the Medical Clown programme but the country became a gl­obal leader. To study the effectiveness of hosp­ital clowning, Dream Doctors estab­l­ished a scientific research fund to provide grants. So far there were 42+ medical stud­ies, 33 published in scient­ific journals. To assess fear of clowns, 1160 children in Carmel Medical Centre paediatric wards were tested. 14 children experienced fear of clowns (1.2%), mainly girls.

In normal times, Israel sent its IDF Medical Corps field hos­pitals around the world to provide medical care after earthquakes, floods and bombs. In addition to medical and rescue staff, the teams included therapeutic clowns who aided in communic­at­ion and offered trauma intervention techniques in missions to Ind­on­esia, Haiti and Jordan. Dream Doc­tors sent 20 teams in their most recent medical missions to the Ukraine, Poland and Moldova, wherever they were needed. Clowning is a universal language.

Reading Simchat Halev's history and photos is fun.

Kenneth Clark's fine tv show: Civilisation

Stourton's book was published in 2017

I knew Kenneth Clark (1903-83) from watching his Civil­is­at­ion series on tv in 1969 and from his involvement with one of my favour­ite art historians Bern­ard Beren­son. And more recently I read Kenneth Clark: Life, Art and Civil­isation by James Stourton (Collins, 2016). 

Born in 1903 into a wealthy textile-based family, Clark progressed through Winchester and Oxford Uni, helped by supportive nannies and teachers. Then he was mentored by Bern­ard Beren­son in Flor­en­ce.

Stourton’s book analysed Clark’s mixed experiences. Clark was a product of the Edward­ian wealthy classes and by 28 he’d became Keeper of Fine Art at the Ashmolean. And King George V (1910-35) per­sonally encouraged Clark to become Keeper of the King’s Pict­ur­es. His classy family back­ground and education ensured a successful career.

Stourton analysed Clark’s emotional and intellectual contra­dictions. He loved his wife Jane (d1976) who had also read history at Ox­ford; they married in 1927 and had 3 children. Jane won his praise early on for her elegance and her role as a host­ess, despite her tem­p­er and booze. Meanwhile Clark’s mistresses fared no better than the wife. Independent women rarely appeared in Civil­isation, neither as creative art­ists nor as patrons. When a woman seemed unfitting, she was des­cr­ibed as an unstable spouse of a long-suffering husband who was forced to seek sol­ace else­where. Clark’s tv present­at­ion of women as objects of desire or insp­ir­ation was close to how his own women were portrayed.

The Civ­ilisation programme had focused largely on Europe, but Clark saw 2 big problems: 1]he loathed the megalomania of Vers­ail­les and wanted to exclude it from Civilisation and 2]the series avoid­ed Spain because it was still ruled by Franco. I Helen have another problem - why did BBC make a series that excluded the cul­tures of the Far East, In­dia, Africa and Central-South America? His omis­s­ions were not because of other cultures’ inferiority, but because of his ignorance. Yet de­spite the concentration on Europe, Clark’s tastes since child­hood had been far from Euro­cen­tric.

Clark became Director of the National Gal­lery in 1938. He had the National Gallery’s masterpieces evacuated to the Welsh mines; and he rein­vented the remaining gal­lery as a cultural centre in wartime Lon­don, including concerts and temporary exhibitions. And great acq­uisitions of art by Bosch, Rubens, Rembrandt, Hogarth and Ingres were protected. Yet the staff were almost ent­irely against him, which led to his re­signation as soon as the war ended.

Clark defined civilised values as moral virtues, using the Enlight­enment’s rationality and the Victorians’ human­itarianism as great examples. But con­trary evidence from his own life suggested that civilisation may have been imp­lic­ated in acquisitive vice.

Clark was laughed at for his uber-priv­il­eged background but he had a great range of expertise. Unlike other authors, Clark’s books were very readable documents, the most famous: Leon­ardo da Vinci 1939, Piero della Francesca 1951, The Nude 1956 and Feminine Beauty 1980. [Clark’s art hero John Ruskin also wrote very readably]. Many people did think Clark was arrogant and snobbish. Blushing at his own inher­it­ed privileges, Clark saw himself as a toff who’d been pro­moted to the status of a sage. So he did the right thing - he sec­retly depos­it­ed funds in the bank acc­ounts of artists who needed subsid­­ies.

In 1954 Clark accepted the chairmanship of the Independent Television Authority and, to the dismay of the BBC, defended the crud­ity of the new commercial channel. But Clark was a nat­ural on screen and he’d already made dozens of programmes for ITV.

Pazzi Chapel in one of the cloisters

in the complex of the Cathedra of Santa Croce, Florence

Expressing Renaissance values-peace, harmony, order, noble striving

Clark presented his history at a time when TV still had interest in educating and exciting millions. So TV history did not need to be uber-scholarly, but it had to express Clark’s love for the arts in clear English. He was Chancellor of the University of York from 1967-78. 

He was 66 when he made Civilisation. I don’t remember my opinion of Clark way back in Feb 1969, but in the first ep­is­ode he must have looked posh and con­fident. Although some were critical, the programme succeeded; Clark’s tv programme earned him a life peerage in 1969.

1968-9 was an awful time in human history, and Clark was afraid that western civilis­ation might vanish. His programme appeared while Czech­oslovakia was invaded, Vietnam’s wars intensified, civil unrest in Paris was chaotic and Martin Lut­her King was murdered. Sadly for Kenneth, his tough right-wing son Alan Clark became a Thatcher minister in 1983, the year Kenneth died.

Civilisation by Kenneth Clark

published in 1970

Clark studied da Vinci’s works in Royal Collection Windsor Castle,

and then Christ Mocked, by Hieronymus Bosch

The National Gallery

Despite criticisms, he was one of the most influent­ial figure in C20th British art. In 2014 The Tate organised "Ken­neth Clark: Looking for Civilisation", an exhibition that examined his role as a pat­ron, collector, art historian, public servant and popular broadcaster.

Read Michael Prodger, "In Defence of Civilisation", in History Today, 2014. Richard Nilsen, A Civilised TV series, 2014. And The Ideal Museum: Art Historian Kenneth Clark on the Formation of Western Institutions, in 1954 in ARTnews.