Even before Sigmund Freud fled Hitler's reign on the Orient Express from Vienna in June 1938, the father of psychoanalysis and his ideas about sex, dreams and cocaine divided opinion in the Austrian capital.

Even now, 75 years after his death in London on Sept 23, 1939, Freud and the groundbreaking theory of mind that he fathered still lack the recognition they achieved outside Austria.

"Nobody is a prophet in their own country, and this is particularly true of Freud and Vienna," said Monika Pessler, director of the small museum at Berggasse 19, where Freud lived and worked for 47 years.