Bertold Löffler's Bookplate for Sigmund Freud1

Among the works of applied arts of the Vienna secessionists around 1900, Bertold Löffler's bookplate for Sigmund Freud is widely regarded as an apogee of its era, constituting a milestone in Viennese bookplate art. While Löffler's artistic creatorship was always ascertained by his monogram at the right edge of the picture, the date of creation has been attributed quite variously, and a similar uncertainty has long surrounded the circumstances of how the bookplate came to be commissioned to the young, precocious artist.

Born in Reichenberg in Bohemia in 1874, Bertold Löffler excelled even as a student. In 1898 he won a poster competition2 at the Vienna Kunstgewerbeschule and thus first distinguished himself in a branch of applied arts in which he was later to enjoy great success: today, his poster for the 1908 ‘Kunstschau’ is regarded a highlight of Vienna modern art. Löffler was also very productive as a book illustrator; his illustrations for the first public edition of Arthur Schnitzler's Reigen (published in the Wiener Verlag in ) may be cited as an example. Since his early years of study, Löffler also created bookplates-a subject matter that was to continue to engage him throughout his life. Due to the prominence of its owner, his bookplate for Sigmund Freud counts among his best-known works (Pichler, 2005/06).

Above the name field occupying the lower third of the image, the bookplate for Sigmund Freud depicts Oedipus and the Sphinx, framing a Greek quotation from Oedipus Tyrannus by Sophocles: ‘He who knew the renowned riddle, and was a most mighty man’3 (see Fig. 1). The figure of Oedipus, facing the beholder, is dressed merely in an ornamental gown-a quite permissive mode of presentation which, in the case of Gustav Klimt's depiction of Theseus in his poster for the first Secession exhibition , had led to the confiscation of the poster by the board of censorship