What You Saw, When You Lay on Sigmund Freud’s Couch

One hundred and sixty-one years ago today Sigmund Freud was born. In honor of his birthday we would like to recommend a video by Nurit Yedlin, which discusses the founder of psychoanalysis with the aid of a miniature version of Freud’s study in Vienna.

A film by Nurit Yedlin, Tel Aviv, 2016

For 47 years Freud treated his patients in the study reproduced here, before emigrating to London via Paris with his family after the Nazi annexation of Austria in June of 1938.

If you’re in a more playful mood you can address the question of what you actually see when you lie on that couch — in an online game on our website that we developed here at the Jewish Museum Berlin for a past exhibition on psychoanalysis. You will find further documentation of that show as well as publications on Freud and his work at www.jmberlin.de/en/sigmund-freud

Have fun browsing!


Israelis in Germany – Ideological Debates and Changing Identities

Three Question for Anthropologists Dr. Dani Kranz and Katja Harbi

A man with woolen hat and warm jacket in front of a graffiti

Photo: Katja Harbi

Our Academy programs regularly introduce new scholarship examining contemporary issues of migration and diversity. On May 4, University of Wuppertal anthropologists Dr. Dani Kranz and Katja Harbi will be presenting the results of the study they conducted, entitled Israeli Migration to Germany since 1990, with a lecture and show of photographs at the Jewish Museum Berlin. The research was largely about these immigrants’ identities and the significance of the Shoah for their lives in Germany, as well as the political and ideological debates occurring around them in Israel and Germany. We put three questions to the two anthropologists in advance of their presentation:  continue reading


A Kind of Family Gathering – Bitter Herbs and Their Relatives in the Diaspora Garden

Yellow plate with foods made of clay and the inscriptions: “Pessah” in the center and all around the edge “Chazeret”, “Beitzah”, “Zeroa”, “Maror”, “Charoset”, and “Karpas”

Shlomit Tulgan made this Seder plate from clay for our children’s exhibition on Passover; Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Jens Ziehe.

It’s Seder and the family is getting together. Some are traveling from farther away, others are flourishing right here. At the table are escarole, lettuce, parsley, kohlrabi, Belgian endive, and dandelion. But what about horseradish and red radish? They’re both late this year.

The story of the plants and their fruits that have particular meaning on the Seder plate at Passover could be told in various similar ways. They all grow in the Diaspora Garden, which you can visit inside the W. Michael Blumenthal Academy at the Jewish Museum.  continue reading