SIGMUND FREUD:
CONFLICT AND CULTURE
My Vienna
“Like you I have an uncontrollable affection for
Vienna, but unlike you I know her deep abysses.”
Sigmund Freud to a friend. Quoted in: George E.
Berkley. Vienna and Its Jews. The Tragedy of Success. 1880s-1980s.
Cambridge, MA - Lanham, MD, 1987:1
“There was hardly a city in Europe where the drive
towards cultural ideas was as passionate as it was in Vienna.”
Stefan Zweig. The World of Yesterday.
English translation. London, 1943:12
“It was not possible, especially not for a Jew in
public life, to ignore the fact that he was a Jew; nobody else was doing
so, not the Gentiles and even less the Jews. You had the choice of being
counted as insensitive, obtrusive and fresh; or of being oversensitive,
shy and suffering from feelings of persecution. And even if you managed
somehow to conduct yourself so that nothing showed, it was impossible to
remain completely untouched.”
Arthur Schnitzler. My Youth in Vienna.
English trans. Catherine Hutter. New York, 1970:6-7
“When someone thought he was becoming prominent, he
might move to Vienna where a man's opportunities were less limited and
the rewards were higher. Vienna's attractions remained irresistible to
the Germans and German-speaking Jews in Ostrau. [...] My mother's annual
visits [...] were considered almost a status symbol at home. It was
said, perhaps not jokingly, that some people stayed up late at night
trying to discover a relative in Vienna whom they might visit, just as a
start.”
Joseph Wechsberg. The Vienna I Knew: Memories of
a European Childhood. Garden City, New York, 1979: 137.
“One circumstance puzzled me before I had been long in
Vienna. In Germany I had associated with Jews scarcely at all; only now
and then did one appear in my circle and no special stress was laid by
either himself or others on the fact that he was Jewish. Here, however,
all whom I came into professional or social contact with were Jews.
[...] I soon realized that all public life was dominated by Jews. [...]
The court, the lower class and the Jews gave the city its stamp. And
that the Jews, as the most mobile group, kept all the others in
continuous motion is, on the whole, not surprising. Yet I was amazed at
the hosts of Jewish physicians, attorneys, clubmen, snobs, dandies,
proletarians, actors, newspapermen and poets.”
Jakob Wassermann. My Life as German and Jew.
New York, 1933:186
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Amusement Park in Vienna: The Vienna Prater
Left to right: Franz Kafka, Albert Ehrenstein,
Otto Pick and Lisa Weltsch-Katznelson
Vienna, Austria, 1915
Photograph: Klaus
Wagenbach,
Beth Hatefutsoth Visual Documentation Center
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