ABSTRACT
On his fiftieth birthday, Freud received a brass medal with his bust and his misspelled name, SIEGMUND FREUD WIEN MCMVI, on the front and an episode of Sophocles’s King Oedipus on the back. It shows Oedipus standing in front of the sphinx. Behind him is Sophocles’s famous saying in Greek letters: “Who divined the famed riddle and was a man most mighty”, again with an error in the Greek spelling, which alters the meaning. Both errors are discussed.
The work was commissioned by Paul Federn and some Viennese adherents. Carl Maria Schwerdtner (1874–1916), a known Viennese sculptor and engraver, created the model. There are two issues related to the medal, the bigger original for the jubilee, still today in Freud’s house, 20 Maresfield Gardens, London. A smaller edition, probably for relatives and friends, is marked on the rim with “Münze Wien”.
The image of Oedipus in front of the sphinx is classified in the contemporary art of the 19th and early 20th centuries and in the prevailing interest in the Oedipus theme in psychoanalysis and beyond.
