CARINA WEISS, PHD, ARCHAEOLOGIST

“SIGMUND FREUD’s OTHER WORLD: A GLIMPSE INTO HIS COLLECTION OF ANTIQUE ART”

February 3, 2016

8:00-10:00pm

 

When Sigmund Freud died in September 1939 in London he had brought together a collection of more than 3000 pieces of antique art. From early on he was fascinated by archaeology which he often compared to his own exploration of the unknown areas of the human mind. Carina Weiss was one of the first to photograph and to publish selected items of Freud's collection in his home in London, Maresfield Gardens, and to reconstruct his relation to archaeology. In her lecture Weiss deals with Freud’s devotion and familiarity with his antique objects. His passion as a collector is demonstrated by the personal reminiscences of one of his Vienna art dealers, Robert Lustig, who emigrated during the Nazi Regime and later on lived and worked in New York. As a specialist of antique glyptic Weiss focuses on Freud’s collection of mainly Roman gems which served as gifts not only to relatives and friends, but also to his closest disciples who formed the ‘inner circle’, the so called ‘secret committee’. She also refers to Freud’s personal relationship to Professor Emanuel Löwy (chair of archaeology and antique history of art in Rome and later in Vienna) and to Dr. Ludwig Pollack, archaeologist and one of the most important art dealers in Rome, who was deported and died during the Holocaust.

Carina Weiss, PhD is a classical archaeologist. She works and teaches at the University of Würzburg (Germany) and has published a number of monographs on Greek iconography, Greek vases and antique gems. She was one of the first to undertake explorations of Sigmund Freud’s collection of antique art and has recently published his collection of gems.

 

Publications include:

- Carina und Heinz Weiß, Ein Blick in die Antikensammlung Sigmund Freuds. Sechs ausgewählte Vasen, in: Antike Welt 16, 1985, 43-52.

- Heinz und Carina Weiß, Eine Welt wie im Traum. Sigmund Freud als Sammler antiker Kunstgegenstände, in: Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse 16, 1984, 189-217

- Carina und Heinz Weiß, Dem Beispiel jener Forscher folgend ... Zur Bedeutung der Archäologie im Leben Freuds, in: Luzifer-AMOR. Zeitschrift zur Geschichte der Psychoanalyse. Band 3, 1989: (Freudbilder. Annäherungen an eine historische Gestalt), 45-71.

- Carina Weiss, "Geschnittene Steine gekauft". Antike Gemmen aus dem Besitz von Sigmund Freud, in: Claudia Benthien - Hartmut Böhme - Inge Stephan (editors), Freud und die Antike (Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2011).

 

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