Muriel Gardiner: The legendary psychoanalyst who helped hundreds of Jews
In 1985, when psychoanalyst Muriel Gardiner Buttinger passed away, her obituary in the New York Times highlighted her heroic deeds as a student in Vienna. Gardiner aided Jews and antifascists to escape from fascist-ruled Austria by providing them with counterfeit passports and funds.
Born into immense wealth in Chicago in 1900, Gardiner pursued literature at Oxford University after graduating from Wellesley College. She then travelled to Vienna with the hope of becoming a patient of Freud. Although Freud couldn’t accommodate her, Gardiner was captivated by psychoanalysis and decided to enroll in medical school. It was in 1932, as a student, that she witnessed Nazis invading the school and hurling Jewish students out of windows.
Gardiner joined the anti-fascist resistance, using the codename Mary, and offered her home as a safe haven for dissidents. For those needing to flee, she smuggled counterfeit passports into Austria, often concealed within her corset, and supplied the necessary travel funds.
In 1983, while Dr. Gardiner was penning her memoir, Code Name Mary, her editor suggested that her feats in the anti-fascist resistance were the inspiration for Lillian Hellman’s character Julia in her memoir Pentimento, which was later adapted into a film. Despite Hellman’s denial of this connection, Gardiner pointed out the striking similarities between their accounts. She also noted that although she and Hellman had never personally met, they shared the same lawyer for many years.
Using the codename Mary, she joined the anti-fascist resistance and offered her apartment as a sanctuary for dissidents. For those needing to escape, she smuggled counterfeit passports into Austria, often hidden within her corset, and supplied the necessary travel funds.
After World War II, Dr. Gardiner, a slender, elegant woman with a sharp wit, had a distinguished career as a psychoanalyst specializing in the treatment of troubled children. In 1976, she compiled the case histories of 10 young killers into a study of teenage violence titled “The Deadly Innocents”.
She dedicated the final years of her life to establishing the Sigmund Freud Museum in the house where Freud and his daughter Anna once lived in Hampstead, England. Dr. Gardiner was married to Joseph Buttinger, a leader of the Austrian Revolutionary Socialists.
Her image and accomplishments are currently showcased in two exhibitions, including Alice Neal’s exhibition at the Belgian gallery Xavier Hufkens.
Following the success of Alice Neal’s exhibition, “People Come First”, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the stories behind the faces she portrayed in her paintings started to unfold.
Alice Neal typically painted striking portraits of her friends and neighbors in her Manhattan apartment. However, for Gardiner, she made an exception. In 1966, she traveled across town to the psychoanalist’s house on the Upper East Side. She then brought the canvas back to her home, where it remained in her possession without ever being displayed. She depicted Gardiner seated in an armchair, wearing a plaid suit against a vivid yellow wall.
The portrait is making its debut in an exhibition in Belgium entitled “Seeing who we are”, which features ten works that have never before been shown to the public.
Gardiner was a patron of Alice Neal, and many of the paintings she created were due to Gardiner’s belief in and support for her fellow artist, providing her with an annual stipend of $6,000, a contribution she continued until Neal’s death. Gardiner was among the many artists that Gardiner supported, often utilizing funds she inherited from her affluent Chicago family.
A second exhibition featuring Gardiner’s work is taking place in London, at the Freud Museum. Titled “Code Name Mary”, it showcases previously unseen documents, photographs, and paintings, loaned by Gardiner’s family, that narrate her efforts in the 1930s to help Jews and anti-fascists escape from Nazi-occupied Austria, saving hundreds of lives. Gardiner’s foundation has been a supporter of the Freud Museum since its inception in 1986 and continued to do so until 2020.
The exhibition includes paintings that Gardiner purchased from Sergei Pankejeff, famously known as Freud’s patient “The Wolf Man”, to support him in his time of need, along with other works she acquired throughout her life.
Despite her wealth, Gardiner led a modest lifestyle, opting for mass-produced clothing, and the paintings in her home were reproductions. Throughout her life, she held a disdain for material possessions and art collections, choosing instead to devote her life to her scientific pursuits.
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