One of the things I desperately wanted to see during my trip to Zürich, Switzerland, in 2015 were the front doors of the Jung family home in Küsnacht.
While at a lecture by Jungian analyst Paul Kugler in 2003, I was completely moved, stunned, and taken aback by a photo in his slideshow presentation. It was of C.G. Jung with one hand on a doorknob and the other holding a set of keys. After the presentation, I asked Dr. Kugler about the photo. He told me I could find it in the book C.G. Jung: Word and Image, which has since become one of my greatest sources of inspiration. The photo's caption reads, "At the entrance to the house in Küsnacht, 1960". {Here is the scanned photo.}
Many have taken notice of the inscription above the doors, "VOCATUS ATQUE NON VOCATUS DEUS ADERIT," {"Called or not called, God will be there"} but for me, the doors are the symbol, and Jung holds the key.
Jung lived in this house from 1908 until his death in 1961. He and his wife Emma raised their children there, and it's where he saw patients while in private practice.
I shot the video you see on the right with my iPhone on November 24, 2015. It was cold, there was lots of traffic on the busy two-way street, and I was very careful not to trespass. The video is awful and I'm embarrassed to post it. But it's all I have to show those of you who've not been there and are curious.
In 2008, Jung's grandson, Andreas, who currently resides in the home with his family, published the book The House of C.G. Jung: The History and Restoration of the Residence of Emma and Carl Gustav Jung-Rauschenbach.
From the book jacket:
“In 1908 Carl Gustav Jung and his wife, Emma Rauschenbach, built this house in a cheerful, tranquil place”
Chiseled in stone, these Latin words decorate the elaborately designed portal of the C.G. Jung House in Küsnacht and commemorate the completion of the building on the bank of Lake Zürich. The project began in 1906, with a letter from Carl Gustav Jung to his cousin Ernst Fiechter (1875-1948), an architect and lecturer on architectural history at the Technische Hochschule in Munich: “We have in mind to build a house someday, in the country near Zürich, on the lake.”
At the time, however, Jung was an impecunious assistant medical director at the Burghözli mental home in Zürich. What enabled him to build a manorial home was the fact that his wife, Emma Jung-Rauschenbach, had suddenly become wealthy after her father died young. —Andreas Jung
C.G. Jung, the important explorer of the human psyche and founder of Analytical Psychology, lived and worked in his home in Küsnacht on Lake Zürich from 1908 to 1961, along with his wife, Emma Jung-Rauschenbach, whose wisdom was the heart of the house where they raised their five children.
A hundred years after it was built and following the completion of renovation, this house is represented in this lavishly illustrated record, published to document the creation of the property on Lake Zürich and its transformation since then. The House of C.G. Jung captures its previous and present states in text and images.
This volume is an architectural portrait of a truly unique home, as well as a commemoration of its original builders and owners.
Includes 160 illustrations, many in color.”
In Episode #11 of this podcast, I recount my visit to Zürich with guest-host Shaun Lau. You can listen to it here.