A month after the Nazis took over Austria on March 12, 1938, every business owned by Jews had a Nazi appointed to run it. For eighty-two-year-old Sigmund Freud, the world's leading psychoanalyst, the appointed "commissar" was a thirty-five-year-old chemist, Anton Sauerwald. Goebbels and Himmler wanted all psychoanalysts, especially Freud, humiliated and, later, killed, and Sauerwald was in a position to seal Freud's fate.

The Escape of Sigmund Freud tells of the Nazi raid on Freud's house produced evidence that would have prevented the Freuds from leaving Austria--yet Sauerwald chose to hide this from his superiors. With never-before-seen material, David Cohen reveals the last two years of Freud's life and the fate of Sauerwald, from the arrest of Freud's daughter, Anna, by the Gestapo; the dramatic saga behind the signing of Freud's exit visa and his eventual escape to London via Paris; to how the Freud family would have the chance to save Sauerwald's life as well.



DAVID COHEN is a writer, filmmaker, and psychologist. His books include Psychologists on Psychology and biographies of the therapist Carl Rogers and of John B. Watson, the founder of behaviorism. His films include When Holly Went Missing and The Pleasure Principle. He lives in London.