Der Moses des Sigmund Freud

Franz Maciejewski brings together two strands of Freud’s biography that have so far been neither understood nor connected to each other: Freud’s obsessive preoccupation with the character of Moses on the one hand; and his brother Julius’ early death that had a lasting traumatic effect on him on the other. Connecting these two aspects, we achieve an entirely new perspective on Freud’s studies “Michelangelo’s Moses” and “The Man Moses and Monotheistic Religion”. Like a picture puzzle, the image of the long dead brother becomes apparent behind the facets of Moses taken from the history of art and religion. Recognizing that Freud was vexed by a “Moses complex” throughout his life forces us to reinterpret his works on Moses.