This exhibition shows how two pseudo-ideologies, nationalism and antisemitism, affected Freud’s life.
In 1938, driven by the Nazis from his home in Vienna, at the age of 82 Freud became a "displaced person".
He found refuge in England. But did he also find peace in London?
This exhibition shows how two pseudo-ideologies, nationalism and antisemitism, affected Freud's life.
Contemporary documents and objects - a visitors' notebook, a Nazi tax document, letters and items from his collection of antiquities illustrate his sense of nationality and tell the story of his life-long confrontation with antisemitism, his flight from the Nazis and his final year in London.
In exile he completed a final work, Moses and Monotheism, which has intrigued and baffled readers ever since. In dreams images are displaced and condensed. In that book the protagonist Moses shifts shape like a dream figure - but the dream was world history.
In his final home at Maresfield Gardens we see Freud on film, apparently enjoying a garden party.
But appearances are, as always, deceptive.
The only recording of his voice ends the film and his last sentence is: "But the struggle is not yet over."
What was Freud's "promised land"? As far as official nationality was concerned, he was born a "Mosaic" (i.e. Jewish) Austro-Hungarian and he died a stateless refugee - nominally German and an "enemy alien". He had long dreamed of adopting British nationality but that wish remained unfulfilled.
