Sigmund Freud is worried: "Anna, you are hiding something from us."

Sigmund Freud is worried: "Anna, you are hiding something from us." Gioia Osthoff, from 2017 to 2020 in the ensemble of the Josefstadt and this year at the Reichenau Festival, came across the correspondence between Anna Freud and her father. From this, she compiled a dialogue, which she supplemented with further material (Daniela Finzi from the Freud Museum advised scientifically). And she won Devid Striesow, who jointly contested the reading evening. He had just directed the film "Vaterland," in which Erika Mann accompanies her father on a journey through divided post-war Germany: a somewhat comparable constellation. Because in both cases, the daughters take care of the fathers. Anna Freud (1895–1982) was likely a papa-child. Later she became his secretary, she organized the escape from Austria, finally she cared for Sigmund Freud until his death. But "Freud! My black devil" is also the story of a daughter who grows up with an overpowering father, emancipates herself, and becomes a pioneer of child psychoanalysis. On August 23rd there was a preview at the cultural summer in Semmering, on Saturday the premiere took place in the MuTh. The reading evening begins with Stefan Zweig's "Words at Sigmund Freud's grave" from 1939 in London. Then Anna Freud introduces herself: The psychiatrist, who lovingly called her "my black devil," was the only man in her life. That this introduction does not come from Anna Freud, Gioia Osthoff perhaps could have mentioned. The correspondence, presented chronologically (the war breaks out, people die, the Nazis burn Freud's writings), touches: She reports to her "father" overflowingly, he replies in polished words full of goodness – and sometimes with worry, because she cannot find a man and clings to him: "Anna, you are hiding something from us, perhaps something from yourself." The concluding remark caused by the current situation is taken from a letter by Freud to Einstein from 1932: "Everything that promotes cultural development also works against the war." He was convinced of this. The daughter fulfills this duty.