Vacheron Constantin

The Backstory

As the saying goes; “time flies”.  And so it was only two years ago, in March of 2020, when I came across mention of the Manufacture Vacheron & Constantin in the archives of the Sigmund Freud Museum in London, a satellite of the National Archives of the United Kingdom.  Within an obscure folder marked “Insurance policies and premium receipts etc of Sigmund Freud” was mentioned a certain document; the Certificate of Origin for a Vacheron & Constantin watch.  Yet this particular scrap of paper stood alone among the family papers and medical records, unanchored to any object or known history.

Seeing this, however, brought forth a distant remembrance from zee little grey cells of another Vacheron & Constantin linked to the great psychoanalyst and also ensconced in a national collection.  This connection, however, was some distance away; across the Atlantic in the vaults of the United States Library of Congress in Washington, DC.

There, within a collection aptly designated; “Sigmund Freud Papers”, was a box.  Inside the box, sharing space with a small Greek statue and an oil painting of Freud himself, was a watch. 

Photographs clearly showed a men’s yellow gold Vacheron & Constantin pocket watch on a pink and white gold fob.

This artifact had been archived only with the following description:

Freud’s pocket watch which he gave to his personal physician Max Schur.

Was there a relationship between the watch and certificate?  I had to know!  The quest began with an email to the folks in London, requesting a scan of their certificate.  Within a week I had confirmation from Curator Bryony Davies that, while the document was present and accounted for, it was not digitized.  Due to covid, museum staff were unable to make a copy but my request was placed on their to-do list once normal times emerged…

The metronome of time tick-tock’d for a year and a half before I sent a gentle reminder in October of 2021 to Bryony, inquiring about progress with her to-do list.  I was more than a little surprised when a response came back almost immediately, with an attachment!  At last, before me was the Certificat d’Origine et de Garantie for Vacheron & Constantin Nr. 215286; an 18 karat gold watch with movement Nr. 350101.

It was now time to contact the Library of Congress and, once again, I was fortunate enough to connect with a supportive individual.  Historical Specialist Dr. Meg McAleer was very interested in my quest as she, too, wanted documentation for their watch.  A note of concern entered her voice, however, when I disclosed the watch case must be opened to ascertain its serial numbers and any personal inscriptions on the cuvette.  Not to worry, a professional conservator was recently hired and the task of opening the watch would go on their to-do list…

Our virtual metronome continued to mark the passage of time until February of 2022 when I sent a little reminder and was rewarded with the news that, in a few days, they would be attempting to open the watch; a task understandably delayed by covid measures.  Meg asked for some instructions and I was able to create a pictorial how-to based on the type of watch revealed in their online images.  

Their success was soon reported back, along with never-before seen photographs of the pristine movement.

It was my turn to delight them with a declaration that, indeed, their watch matched the certificate in London.  Thus confirmed, an image of the document was forwarded, along with a more technical description of the watch case and movement.

And so we arrive at today.  Will the watch and certificate ever be united?  I hope so, even if only on temporary loan from one museum to the other.

The Watch

Manufacturer: Vacheron et Constantin, Genève

Year: circa 1910 

Dial: white enamel with Breguet-style numerals, outer minute track, subsidiary seconds, gold spade hands, signed Vacheron & Constantin Geneve

Case: Nr. 215286, 47 mm, 18k gold open-face four-part demi-bassine plain polished body with hinged back and hinged gold cuvette signed Vacheron & Constantin Geneve

Movement: Nr. 350101, 19-lignes, gold-frosted gilt brass, stem-winding and setting, going barrel with wolf's tooth winding, 18 ruby jewels with screwed gold chaton on the centre wheel, straight-line lever escapement, cut bimetallic compensating balance with gold poising screws, blued steel Breguet hairspring, index regulator with white sapphire jewel, swan-neck spring and micrometric screw, signed Vacheron & Constantin Geneve

The History

I am greatly indebted for the following to an article published in The Atlantic on 23 September 2014 by Prof. Lewis Cohen, titled; How Sigmund Freud Wanted to Die.

Recall this notation provided by the Library of Congress:

Freud’s pocket watch which he gave to his personal physician Max Schur

Sigmund Freud, a heavy smoker, was suffering from cancer of the mouth when he was examined by a physician in 1923 at the age of 67.  This doctor decided to spare his famous patient from the bad news, instead describing his condition as pre-cancerous and, even further, recruited his closest friends into a pact of secrecy.  

It seems, however, that Freud knew something was up.  Following surgery, the physician disclosed that he had lost his patient’s confidence and resigned.

And so Freud met Max Schur in 1926.  The young physician was recommended to Freud by Princess Marie Bonaparte.  Over the next few years, Schur supervised Freud’s continuing treatments and surgeries.  Unfortunately, by 1938 the cancer was, as Schur put it, inaccessible.

This personal drama was unfolding while the nazis were stomping into Austria.  Schur urged Freud to flee but the great man refused to consider it, perhaps hoping his fame would provide a shield from the gestapo.  As insurance, however, Sigmund’s daughter Anna and son Martin obtained fatal quantities of barbiturates from Schur - just in case.  It was only following the arrest of Anna, and her safe return hours later, that Freud accepted they must flee.  Thus he secured visas to England for his family and close friends, including Schur.

Once in London, Schur continued his treatment of Freud and started him on radical new radiation therapy in 1939, eventually moving into the house to administer to him day and night.  As the pain worsened, Sigmund reminded his friend of a promise made when they first met to not let him suffer endlessly.  On September 23, 1939, Freud died quietly in early hours at the age of 83, assisted by an injection of morphine.

Freud had bequeathed his pocket watch to Schur, who was now free to leave Europe.  He boarded a ship to America with his family.  After stopping to pick up survivors of a U-boat attack, performing an appendectomy on one of the crew, and attending to hundreds of wounded when the ship was struck by a tidal wave, he arrived in New York City and established a private practice.  Max Schur died in 1969 of pneumonia from the flu at the age of 72.

Sometime thereafter Schur’s watch found its way into the Freud Papers collection at the Library of Congress, an archive of materials and artifacts chiefly assembled by fellow analysts commencing in 1951.  As the Library of Congress declares, they “succeeded in obtaining many original Freud items through gift and purchase”.

From the photographic evidence, Freud’s vest and watch chain clearly formed an integral part of his sartorial countenance but how many knew the prestigious brand name attached to the end of that chain?  How did Freud himself view the concept of time?

In an article published in 2001 by Elvio Fachinelli in the European Journal of Psychoanalysis titled; Freud’s Clock - On Time in Psychoanalysis, the author studied Freud’s use of time in his practice.  The results were surprising.  In what he described as his Grand Clock, Freud strictly regulated his day in one hour increments to be rented, as it were, by the patient for their use or not, as they saw fit.  Freud acknowledged this industrial approach, while expected of a music or language teacher, was deemed somewhat brutal when applied to psychoanalysis.  However, he considered the pressure imposed on his patients to be instrumental in motivating their participation.  

Was there a clock on the wall to remind him, or was this watch his lone arbiter of time?  Like a meme from countless Hollywood scenes in the psychiatrists office, one can imagine Freud pulling the watch from its vest pocket for a brief glance, unseen by his couch-prone subject.

Let us not conclude the story of our watch just yet.  The serial numbers place its manufacture around 1910, perhaps as late as 1912.  The movement’s characteristics certainly support this date and, in many respects, is a downsized version of the immensely popular Chronometre Royal series of that era.

What, I wonder, was going on with this famous personality in his early fifties which caused him to mark the occasion with such a timepiece? 

The certificate provides us with a clue.  While the face of the document is, as always, in French, the reverse “Instructions for keeping the watch in good condition” are in German, reflecting its intended market. 

Perhaps the watch was gifted to Freud from his compatriots at the International Psychoanalytic Congress of Nuremberg in March of 1910 when he founded the International Psychoanalytical Association?  We may never know, as the watch is absent any dedication, but I am nevertheless content; it has been a most satisfying quest.

The paranoid is not always entirely mistaken.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Sigmund Freud