Freud's Free Clinics

1927
a psychoanalytic sanatorium thus predated the Berlin Poliklinik. Actually all
of Simmel’s combined clinical and political ideas were bound up in the sanatorium
project. For eight years now he had been raising funds to expand on
the Poliklinik experience, and finally, in April 1927, sufficient financial backing
came through to underwrite its inpatient counterpart. The German minister
of health and education promised to send beds and to deploy state
physicians there for training. It was an article of faith at the Poliklinik, and
among members of the Socialist physicians circle, that the sanatorium would
be as great a success as the clinic. While it never did attain prosperity, Ernst
Simmel’s Schloss Tegel Sanatorium survived for about five years as a nucleus
of original clinical initiatives. The sanatorium also served Freud personally
as an uncommonly peaceful retreat in a small renovated castle on the
edge of Berlin.
In some respects the Schloss Tegel Sanatorium recalled the leafy suburban
life of prewar Austria (figure 27). “It is half an hour by car from the city center,
but beautiful and quiet, situated in a park a few minutes from Lake Tegel,”
Freud told Ernest Jones. 2 On April 1 Freud congratulated Simmel on Tegel’s
opening. “I wish you now what you need above all,” he wrote, “a little luck.” 3
The Tegel Sanatorium opened officially on April 11 for the residential treatment
27 Entrance to Schloss Tegel Park,
Berlin (Author)
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