At the moment Sigmund Freud was born to Amalie Nathanson and Jakob Freud on May 6, 1856, the once- dominant Hapsburg dynasty was beginning to wane. By 1866, at the conclusion of the Austro-Prussian War, the Treaty of Prague stripped Austria of its status as a great European power and reduced its land holdings. The proof of this decline was a new empire, Austria-Hungary, whose name indicated that not only had one consistently stable Germanic member been defeated, but that German history had taken a drastic new step and would continue to move forward in history without impetus from Austria. Needless to say, Austria’s downfall deeply affected Vienna.

Like most of central Europe it is easy to characterize Vieena by her geography. Located by the Danube River, Vienna sits firmly in Eastern Europe. In fact, much of Viennese history revolves around defenses of the Turks in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the two sieges of the city: the first in 1529 and the second in 1683. That was her old role -- defender of the west. However, by the turn of the century, Vienna was heavily populated by Bohemians, Moravians, and Czechs.This contradiction is one of many that existed in Vienna. For example, during Freud’s childhood and young adult life a growing textile industry placed Vienna as the commercial and industrial center of the empire. However, the existence of a middle class and successful industry was not enough. The definitively ‘western’ industrial path Vienna had taken garnered little support throughout the city and even less through Austria. Industry , seemingly a head without a body, once again trapped Vienna between western modernism and eastern provincialism. So perhaps it is fair to say that Vienna was an eastern city looking west.

Far before the turn of the century, when Vienna enjoyed her status as the queen of Germany, absolutism tamed diverging ideas and philosophies. But during the Fin-de-siecle, the weakened empire no longer had such control. Karl Lueger and the Christian Democratic Party stepped in for the weakened empire to stifle and repress liberalism. The Jewish population of Vienna, which had developed since the 1860s, held tightly political liberalism and enlightened values and solicited a culture protected by universal rights and democratic benefits. The Jewish population represented the a modernized Vienna. They manifested the fruition of a growing middle class, the destruction of the city’s fortification, and the transition from the court of the nobleman to the salon of the middle class. By doing so however, they left themselves open to attacks from advocates of pre-modernized Vienna. The antagonist of Karl Lueger’s Christian Social Party that practiced anti-Semitism was not as much the Jew as it was the modern Viennese. Its enemy was a member of the liberal, industrial capitalist class. The Jewish culture of Vienna fit the bill quite nicely and therefore stood in as a representation of new and unfavorable political ideologies. Many anti-Semites hated Jews because they viewed them as leaders of a subversive movement to overthrow the old Vienna, but others hated them merely for being Jewish. Within the Jewish community there was distrust, too. While many of the Jewish population of Vienna supported the liberal, industrial capitalist class, many Eastern Jews were not so ‘modern’. The ambivalence harbored by the assimilated Jews toward the unassimilated can be summarized by Hermann Kesten. "Those who came here ten years ago do not love the newcomers. Yet another one has arrived. Yet another one who wants to make a living. Yet another one who wants to live. The worst thing is: one cannot let him die...He is a Jew and a compatriot."

The repression in Vienna was not limited to the Jews. The old- fashioned anti-liberal class tried to suppress anything that broke with Vienna’s tradition, whether it be politics or art. Gustav Klimt rose to fame during the Fin-de-siecle as a member of Veinna’s rising bourgeoisie. Klimt fully represented the modern Vienesse culture from which he arose. For example, in one piece, Shakespeare’s Theater, Klimt shows himself and his brother among an Elizabethan audience in the same way many previous artists historicized themselves at biblical events. Gustav Klimt started a movement in 1897 called the Secession, which aimed "to show modern man his true face," as architect Otto Wagner stated. In order to discover himself, though, modern man had to seceed from his father’s tradition. However, the movement was not solely tied to art. Secession was not simply an artistic movememnt. It was developed by the liberal intelligentsia, too.

During the years Klimt was rising to fame, Sigmund Freud was professionally ostracized, working on The Interpretations of Dreams , which would first be published in 1913. The Fin-de-siecle were tumultuous years for Freud because of professional failure, political uncertainty, and the death of his father.

To ask where Sigmund Freud fits into turn-of-the- century Viennese society would be quite redundant, for Freud sat right in its epicenter. As a Jewish member of the liberal middle class, Freud saw his professional career devastated by anti-Semitism. Freud could have been described as firmly Jewish. He was so fiercely aware of anti-Semitism that he had very few friends during his life who were not Jewish. As a young boy Freud was startled by something he witnessed: A man had knocked a fur hat off his father’s head and yelled "Jew, get off the pavement!" The twelve-year-old Sigmund was stunned by this event and even more stunned that his father did not retaliate. But, for young Sigmund the event was a startling realization of the repressive nature of his society.

Freud’s dream was to be a professor, and academic promotions grew more and more sparse by the turn of the century -- especially for men of his religious and political standing. The average wait to be given a professorship was eigtht years in Vienna. It took Freud seventeen. In addition, Austria’s quest for a national identity fascinated Freud. A man of great political interest, Freud was fearful of the New Right in Austria and beyond. He was also quite interested in the Dreyfus affair in France, and he considered Emile Zola, the novelist who supported Dreyfus, his personal hero. From his political stances it is quite hard to differentiate Freud from his Vienese origin, for Freud contained the same political insecurity of his motherland. An uncertain future, which dominated Vienna, crippled the young man. In the face of his professional frustration Freud felt paralyzed. He could change anti-Semitism and destroy the forces that repressed Vienna from liberalism and modernity. Thus, he accepted a lower social standing -- from the upper medical and academic intelligentsia to the level of regular Jewish doctors. The move, as painful as it may have been, left Freud at a stratum where he no longer felt threatened.

In addition, in 1896 Freud lost his father. The event was "...the most important , the most poignant, loss of a man’s life," explained Freud. The loss of his father came at a time in Freud’s life when he was uncertain and frustrated. Many of his dreams in The Interpretation of Dreams make clear how deep a loss he felt.

It would be impossible to argue that Sigmund Freud would have never created psychoanalysis if he had not been from Fin-de-siecle Vienna. However, evidence reveals that Freud was certainly a product of his historical epoch. It would be impossible to separate entirely Freud’s internal repression from the repressive culture he grew up in. Perhaps one dream, which Freud entitled, "The Revolutionary Dream" from August 1898 illustrates this connection most clearly. That August, after a winter of violence between Germans and Czechs, language rights in Germany remained unresolved. In addition, two months earlier a violent anti-Semitic outbreak occurred in Galicia. That August, Franz Thun, the Austrian Prime Minister, was devoting his time to attempting to negotiate a preliminary accord between Austria and Hungary. Thun, an old line Bohemian noble was trying to compromise with the Germans, and, prodding their aggression, became a bitter enemy. On the day of the dream, Freud was waiting for a train in Vienna when he noticed Thun on the platform. Thun walked throught the station well dressed, not in the least concealing his wealth nor power. As Thun walked on the train without a ticket, Freud’s resentment of aristocracy was aroused. On the train Freud dreamt himself at a university student gathering where Thun was condemning German nationalism, belittling the symbolic flower of German nationalism as a ‘limp plant’. In the dream Freud rose angrily. In the dream Freud saw himself rising as a representation of Adolf Fischhof, a Jewish medical student leader who helped to begin the Revolution of 1848 at the University of Vienna. In the dream Freud also recalled defying a man he identified as Victor Adler in a German nationalist rally. In reality, Adler was a Jewish former student of Freud’s who had become the leader of the Austrian Social Democracy by 1898. In analyzing the dream Freud realized that one could be both a Jewish doctor and a Jewish political leader. After an outburst of anger, Freud suddenly exited the university halls and fled to the train station.

In The Revolutionary Dream it is clear that Freud is coming to terms with the fact that a Jew can be both a doctor and political leader, a truth he previously denied. His outburst and retreat through the university halls represents academia, which Freud felt shunned from, too. There is one final scene to the dream, however. On the train platform Freud is in the company of a blind man, whom he recognizes as his dead father. As an act of grace, Freud holds a urinal for the helpless man.

The Revolutionary dream represents the outburst of a man’s spirit against repression. The repression of the dream, both personal and related to Vienese culture, indicate how closely Freud and his groundbreaking The Interpretation of Dreams were linked to Fin-de-siecle Vienna.

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