ABSTRACT
This chapter considers Franz Alexander’s personal and professional life, the role of family in his decisions, and how those decisions affected other family members. Like most at the time who had experienced the Great War, Alexander was demoralized, and he was demoralized when he left Budapest and came to Berlin. It was especially difficult for him to accept the effects of war on Hungary and the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire as well as the effects of war on his family. Alexander found Berlin to be quite different from his opulent native Budapest. Berlin was coarser, with an edge to it. In the autumn of 1920 Alexander went to Berlin where he was accepted as the first student at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute. Being in Berlin offered Alexander an opportunity to return to the journey he left behind when drafted into the Hungarian Army as World War I began.
