On the morning of 6 June 1938, an elderly man with a neatly trimmed white beard stepped out of a car on a quiet residential street in Hampstead, North London. He was eighty-two years old, frail, and in considerable pain from the oral cancer that had plagued him for fifteen years. He had left behind everything he had known: the city where he had lived for nearly eight decades, the consulting room where he had listened to thousands of patients, the university where he had lectured, the coffee houses where he had debated with colleagues and critics. He was Sigmund Freud, the most famous psychologist in the world, and he was beginning the final chapter of his life in a red-brick Edwardian house at 20 Maresfield Gardens, Hampstead.
The house that awaited him was a substantial but not grand property, built around 1920 in the style typical of the area: three storeys of dark red brick with white-painted window frames, a small front garden, and a larger garden at the rear. It had been found for him by his son Ernst, an architect who had emigrated to London several years earlier, and it was chosen with care. The house was large enough to accommodate Freud's extensive library and his remarkable collection of antiquities, and the quiet, tree-lined street offered the privacy and seclusion that a man of his fame and fragility required. Hampstead, with its long tradition of welcoming intellectuals, artists, and refugees, was a natural choice. It would become, in the fifteen months that remained to him, both his sanctuary and his final home.
Flight from Vienna: The Anschluss and Its Aftermath
To understand the significance of 20 Maresfield Gardens, one must understand what Freud left behind. He had lived in Vienna since the age of four, arriving with his family from the Moravian town of Freiberg (now Pribor in the Czech Republic) in 1860. For nearly half a century, he had worked at Berggasse 19, the apartment and consulting room that had become the birthplace of psychoanalysis. It was there that he had developed his theories of the unconscious, the interpretation of dreams, the Oedipus complex, and the structure of the psyche. It was there that he had received patients on the famous couch, analysed their free associations, and built the intellectual framework that would transform the understanding of human nature.
Freud had resisted leaving Vienna for years, even as the political situation deteriorated. The rise of Austrian fascism in the 1930s, the growing influence of Nazi ideology, and the increasing persecution of Jews had alarmed his friends and family, but Freud remained stubbornly attached to his home. He compared himself to an old tree that could not be transplanted. When the Anschluss came on 12 March 1938, with German troops marching into Austria and Hitler proclaiming the union of the two countries, Freud's position became untenable. The Gestapo raided his apartment, confiscated his passport, interrogated his daughter Anna, and extorted a large sum of money from the psychoanalytic association. Nazi thugs ransacked the offices of the Verlag, Freud's publishing house, destroying books and manuscripts.
The intervention of influential friends and admirers was crucial to Freud's escape. Princess Marie Bonaparte of Greece, a former patient and devoted disciple, used her connections and her personal fortune to negotiate with the Nazi authorities. Ernest Jones, the Welsh psychoanalyst who had become Freud's most important English-speaking advocate, lobbied the British government for entry visas. William Bullitt, the American ambassador to France and a collaborator on a study of Woodrow Wilson, applied diplomatic pressure. The process was agonisingly slow and humiliating. Freud was forced to sign a statement declaring that he had been treated well by the German authorities, to which he is said to have added the sardonic footnote: "I can heartily recommend the Gestapo to anyone." Whether this story is apocryphal or not, it captures the bitter irony of his situation: the world's foremost analyst of human behaviour, reduced to performing a charade for his persecutors.
Freud left Vienna by train on 4 June 1938, accompanied by his wife Martha, his daughter Anna, and his housekeeper Paula Fichtl. The journey took them through Paris, where Marie Bonaparte hosted them briefly, and then across the Channel to London. They arrived at Victoria Station on 6 June, where they were met by Ernst Freud and a small group of supporters. The British press covered the arrival with interest and sympathy, and Freud was touched by the warmth of his reception. "The feeling of triumph at being freed is too strongly mixed with sadness," he wrote in his diary, "for the old prison has been very dear to me in many ways."
20 Maresfield Gardens: Recreating Berggasse 19
Ernst Freud had chosen 20 Maresfield Gardens with his father's specific needs in mind. The house needed to accommodate not only the family but also Freud's vast library, his collection of nearly two thousand antiquities, and his consulting room with the famous psychoanalytic couch. Ernst, who was a successful architect in his own right, oversaw modifications to the ground floor to create a study and consulting room that would replicate as closely as possible the arrangement at Berggasse 19. The aim was not merely practical but therapeutic: by surrounding his father with familiar objects in a familiar configuration, Ernst hoped to ease the trauma of displacement and provide a sense of continuity in a shattered life.
The recreation was remarkably successful. When the crates of books, antiquities, and furniture arrived from Vienna, Freud directed their placement with meticulous care. The consulting room was arranged on the ground floor, with the famous couch, draped in its Persian carpet and piled with cushions, positioned in the corner where Freud could sit in his green leather chair at its head, invisible to the patient but attentive to every word. The walls were lined with bookshelves, and every available surface was covered with antiquities: Egyptian statuettes, Greek vases, Roman bronzes, Chinese jade carvings. Freud had been an obsessive collector all his life, and these objects were not mere decorations. They represented his deep engagement with the ancient world, his belief that the archaeological metaphor was the most apt description of psychoanalytic work. Just as the archaeologist excavates layers of soil to uncover buried civilisations, the analyst delves through layers of consciousness to reach the buried memories and desires that shape human behaviour.
The study, adjacent to the consulting room, was equally dense with books and artefacts. Freud's desk, a large wooden table covered with papers, photographs, and more antiquities, occupied the centre of the room. Above it hung photographs of colleagues and friends. The room had the atmosphere of a scholar's cave: dimly lit, slightly cluttered, redolent of cigar smoke and old books. It was here that Freud continued to write during his final months, working on "Moses and Monotheism" and "An Outline of Psycho-Analysis," the last works of a mind that remained sharp and productive even as the body that housed it failed.
The domestic arrangements at Maresfield Gardens were managed by Martha Freud and Paula Fichtl with the same efficiency that had characterised the household in Vienna. Martha, who had been married to Sigmund for over fifty years, maintained the routines of meals, visitors, and daily life that provided the structure within which Freud could continue to work. The household also included Dorothy Burlingham, an American heiress and psychoanalyst who had become Anna Freud's closest companion and who occupied rooms on the upper floors. The house was thus both a family home and a professional workspace, a combination that had characterised Freud's living arrangements throughout his career and that continued, with remarkable fidelity, in this new setting.
The Famous Couch: Object and Symbol
No object in the history of psychology is more iconic than Freud's psychoanalytic couch. The couch itself is a relatively ordinary piece of late-nineteenth-century Viennese furniture: a chaise longue with a high back at one end, upholstered in a dark fabric and covered with a richly patterned Persian carpet. Freud had acquired it in the 1890s and had used it continuously for over four decades, first in Vienna and then in London. The carpet, a Qashqai tribal weaving from southern Persia, was given to him by a grateful patient, and the cushions were accumulated over years from various sources. The ensemble is now one of the most photographed objects in the world, an instantly recognisable symbol of the psychoanalytic enterprise.
The couch's journey from Vienna to Hampstead was itself a remarkable feat of logistics. It was packed, along with the rest of Freud's belongings, into crates that were shipped by rail and sea to London. The packing was supervised by Paula Fichtl, Freud's housekeeper, who had an intimate knowledge of where every object belonged. When the couch was unpacked and positioned in the consulting room at Maresfield Gardens, Freud was visibly moved. It represented not just a piece of furniture but the continuity of his life's work: the physical site where the unconscious had been explored, where dreams had been interpreted, where the most intimate secrets of the human psyche had been revealed.
Freud continued to see patients at Maresfield Gardens, though his practice was much reduced from its Viennese peak. His cancer required frequent surgical interventions and caused him constant pain, making extended sessions difficult. Nevertheless, he saw a small number of analysands in the consulting room, maintaining the rituals and routines of psychoanalytic practice until very near the end of his life. The couch, with its familiar carpet and cushions, continued to serve its function: the patient reclined, the analyst listened, and the strange, transformative dialogue of free association unfolded in a quiet room in Hampstead just as it had in Berggasse for decades before.
The Emigre Community: Hampstead as Little Vienna
Freud's arrival in Hampstead was part of a much larger migration. Throughout the 1930s, as the political situation in Central Europe deteriorated, a stream of Jewish and anti-fascist intellectuals, artists, and professionals made their way to London, and many of them settled in Hampstead and the surrounding areas of Swiss Cottage and Belsize Park. This community, sometimes called "Little Vienna" or "Mitteleuropa-on-the-Northern-Line," included some of the most distinguished minds of the twentieth century: the art historians Ernst Gombrich and Nikolaus Pevsner, the philosopher Karl Popper, the novelists Elias Canetti and Stefan Zweig, the architects Erno Goldfinger and Berthold Lubetkin, and many others.
The psychoanalytic community was particularly well represented. Melanie Klein, who had developed her own influential school of psychoanalysis in Vienna and Berlin, had settled in London in 1926 and was well established by the time Freud arrived. Anna Freud, Sigmund's youngest daughter and his intellectual heir, would remain in Hampstead after her father's death and build a formidable psychoanalytic practice and training institute. The arrival of so many Continental analysts in London created tensions within the British Psychoanalytical Society, particularly between the followers of Anna Freud and those of Melanie Klein, whose theoretical approaches differed significantly. These "Controversial Discussions," as they became known, took place largely in Hampstead and shaped the development of psychoanalysis in Britain for decades.
The emigre community transformed Hampstead's cultural life. The coffee houses of Finchley Road and Swiss Cottage became replicas of the Viennese Kaffeehaus, where intellectuals gathered for hours over coffee and cake, debating art, politics, and philosophy. Delicatessens selling Continental specialities appeared on the local high streets. The architectural character of the area was influenced by the modernist sensibilities of the emigre architects, several of whom designed houses and apartment buildings in the area. The Isokon Building on Lawn Road, designed by Wells Coates and opened in 1934, became a particular hub for the emigre community, housing at various times Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. This extraordinary concentration of European intellectual talent gave Hampstead a cosmopolitan character that it retains to this day.
For Freud personally, the emigre community provided a familiar social world in an unfamiliar country. He received visitors constantly at Maresfield Gardens: former colleagues from Vienna, British admirers, international luminaries. H.G. Wells, Salvador Dali, Virginia Woolf, and Stefan Zweig all visited him there. The Woolfs' Hogarth Press had been publishing Freud's works in English translation for years, and Virginia Woolf recorded her impression of the visit in her diary, noting Freud's "alert, screwed-up shrunk" appearance and the searching look he gave her. These visits brought the world to Freud's door and helped to alleviate the isolation that might otherwise have accompanied his exile.
Anna Freud and the Continuation of the Legacy
If Sigmund Freud's time at Maresfield Gardens was measured in months, his daughter Anna's was measured in decades. Anna Freud, born in Vienna in 1895, was the youngest of Sigmund and Martha Freud's six children, and she had become her father's most devoted disciple and closest companion. She had been analysed by her father (a practice that would later be considered ethically problematic), had developed her own important contributions to psychoanalytic theory, particularly in the area of child psychology, and had served as his nurse, secretary, and representative during his long illness. When the family fled Vienna, it was Anna who was detained and interrogated by the Gestapo, an experience that deepened her already intense bond with her father.
After Sigmund Freud's death in September 1939, Anna continued to live at 20 Maresfield Gardens for the next forty-three years, until her own death in 1982. During those decades, the house became the centre of a remarkable intellectual enterprise. Anna established the Hampstead War Nurseries during the Second World War, providing care for children separated from their families by bombing and evacuation, and using the experience to develop her theories of child development. After the war, she founded the Hampstead Child Therapy Course and Clinic, which became one of the most influential training institutions in the field of child psychoanalysis. The clinic occupied premises near the house and attracted students and clinicians from around the world.
Anna Freud's theoretical contributions were substantial and original. Her book "The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence," published in 1936, introduced concepts such as intellectualisation, identification with the aggressor, and altruistic surrender that have become standard terms in psychoanalytic vocabulary. Her work on child development, based on meticulous observation and careful theoretical reasoning, complemented and extended her father's work in important ways. She emphasised the importance of the child's relationship with the external world, particularly with caregivers, and her approach was more empirical and less speculative than some branches of psychoanalysis. The Hampstead Clinic, under her direction, produced a wealth of research that continues to influence clinical practice today.
Anna Freud kept the house at Maresfield Gardens much as it had been during her father's lifetime. His study and consulting room were maintained as he had left them, with the couch, the antiquities, and the books all in their original positions. This decision to preserve the rooms was not merely sentimental; it reflected Anna's deep conviction that her father's legacy was best honoured by maintaining the physical environment in which his ideas had been developed and practised. The house became, in effect, a living memorial, a place where the past was preserved within the ongoing activity of the present.
Freud's Final Months and Death
Freud's last year at Maresfield Gardens was marked by a characteristic combination of intellectual productivity, physical suffering, and sardonic humour. Despite the pain of his cancer, which required a prosthetic palate that made eating and speaking difficult, he continued to work with remarkable discipline. He completed "Moses and Monotheism," a controversial study of the origins of Judaism that argued Moses was an Egyptian, and began "An Outline of Psycho-Analysis," a final summary of his theoretical system. He also continued to see patients, though in diminishing numbers, and received a steady stream of visitors.
The garden at Maresfield Gardens became increasingly important to Freud during these final months. He spent long hours sitting in the garden, reading or simply looking at the flowers and trees. His chow dog, Lun, was a constant companion, sitting at his feet as he read or dozing beside him in the sunshine. Freud had always loved dogs, particularly chows, and Lun's presence was a source of comfort in his declining days. The garden itself, though modest by the standards of some Hampstead properties, was a peaceful retreat, enclosed by walls and hedges that screened it from the street. Ernst Freud had designed a covered veranda at the back of the house, allowing his father to sit outdoors even in inclement weather.
By the summer of 1939, Freud's condition had worsened considerably. The cancer had spread, and the pain was becoming unmanageable. War was approaching, and the news from Europe was grim. Freud, who had experienced the First World War and its aftermath, had no illusions about what was coming. On 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland, and two days later Britain declared war. Freud noted the event in his diary with characteristic brevity.
On 21 September 1939, Freud spoke to his personal physician, Dr. Max Schur, who had followed him from Vienna to London. "My dear Schur, you certainly remember our first talk," he said. "You promised me then not to forsake me when my time comes. Now it is nothing but torture and makes no sense any more." Schur understood. He administered increasing doses of morphine over the next two days, and Freud died in the early hours of 23 September 1939, three weeks after the outbreak of the Second World War. He was eighty-three years old. His body was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium, and his ashes were placed in one of his favourite antiquities, a Greek urn dating from the fourth century BC. They remain there today, alongside the ashes of his wife Martha, who died in 1951.
The Freud Museum: A House of Memory
After Anna Freud's death in 1982, 20 Maresfield Gardens was transformed into the Freud Museum, which opened to the public in 1986. The museum preserves Freud's study and consulting room exactly as they were during his lifetime, complete with the famous couch, the collection of antiquities, the library, and the personal effects that surrounded him during his final years. The experience of entering the study is remarkably powerful: the room is dense with objects, each one carrying its own history and significance, and the cumulative effect is of entering the mind of the man who spent his life exploring the minds of others.
The collection of antiquities alone is worth extended contemplation. Freud's interest in archaeology and ancient civilisations was more than a hobby; it was an intellectual passion that informed his theoretical work. He frequently compared psychoanalysis to archaeology, describing the analyst as someone who excavates the buried strata of the mind, and his collection reflects the breadth and depth of his engagement with the ancient world. Egyptian mummy portraits, Mesopotamian cylinder seals, Roman glass, Greek terracottas, Chinese jade: the objects span thousands of years and many civilisations, and they are arranged on Freud's desk and bookshelves with the careful eye of a connoisseur. The desk itself, with its ranked rows of statuettes facing the chair where Freud worked, creates the impression of an audience of ancient figures watching over the modern scholar's labours.
The museum also preserves Anna Freud's rooms on the upper floors, offering a complementary perspective on the psychoanalytic tradition. Her weaving loom, her books, and her personal effects are displayed alongside exhibitions about her work in child psychology. The juxtaposition of father and daughter within the same house tells a larger story about the transmission of ideas across generations, the relationship between innovation and consolidation, and the ways in which intellectual traditions are sustained and transformed by the people who carry them forward.
Today, the Freud Museum at 20 Maresfield Gardens is one of the most visited house museums in London. It attracts scholars, students, clinicians, and general visitors from around the world, drawn by the enduring fascination of Freud's ideas and the powerful atmosphere of the house where he spent his final days. The museum hosts a programme of exhibitions, lectures, and events that explore the legacy of psychoanalysis and its continuing relevance to contemporary life. The house itself, standing quietly on its tree-lined Hampstead street, bears no outward sign of the extraordinary intellectual drama that unfolded within its walls. It is a monument to the power of ideas and to the resilience of the human spirit: a place where one of the greatest thinkers of the modern age found shelter from the storm of history, surrounded by the objects and the people he loved, and where his legacy is preserved for generations yet to come.
*Published in the Hampstead Renovations Heritage Collection — exploring the architecture, history, and stories of London's most remarkable neighbourhoods.*