In early 1913, several figures who would later shape the twentieth century resided within a few kilometres of each other in Vienna, then the capital of the Austro‑Hungarian Empire. Adolf Hitler, Leon Trotsky, Joseph Stalin and Sigmund Freud were all present in the city during that year, a coincidence noted by historians of the period.
Hitler, then a struggling postcard painter, lived in a men’s hostel in Meldendstraße and frequented Café Central, where he absorbed nationalist rhetoric. Trotsky, exiled after the 1905 revolution, edited the socialist newspaper Pravda from Vienna and also attended Café Central, engaging with fellow émigrés. Stalin arrived briefly in early 1913 under a false name, meeting Trotsky and working on his treatise Marxism and the National Question before departing for partisan activity. Freud, already an established psychoanalyst, resided at Berggasse 19, saw patients, lectured at the university and published Totem and Taboo that same year, moving in the city’s affluent professional circles.
Although their social worlds barely overlapped—Freud’s café habits were distinct from the political haunts of the revolutionaries, and Hitler remained on the fringes of intellectual life—their simultaneous presence underscores Vienna’s role as a crossroads for dissent, creativity and ambition before the First World War. The convergence illustrates how the city’s cafés, publishing houses and cheap lodgings attracted individuals whose later actions would reverberate globally, even if they never met in person.
https://sarajevotimes.com/connected-tito-hitler-stalin-1913-vienna/
http://freudquotes.blogspot.com/2016/12/vienna-1913-when-freud-hitler-trotsky.html
