In the year 1891

Cocaine & Freud: When Sherlock Holmes lived in Vienna

Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of master detective Sherlock Holmes and fan of Austria.(Bild: Krone KREATIV/picturedesk stock.adobe.com)

Sherlock Holmes inventor Arthur Conan Doyle spent three months in Vienna in the spring of 1891. It was a stay full of coke, Sigmund Freud, ice skating and missed medical lectures that was to change the British writer's life forever. Krone+ went in search of historical traces. 

"We arrived on a deadly cold night, with deep snow underfoot and a blizzard in the air. Seen from the station, the electric lights threw shiny silver snowflakes into the absolute darkness of the sky." This is how Arthur Conan Doyle, the literary father of master detective Sherlock Holmes, describes his arrival at Vienna West Station on January 5, 1891.