ABSTRACT
In August 1916, Sigmund Freud wrote to his daughter, Anna, to tell her he had arrived at Bad Gastein, one of the most fashionable spas in Europe. His wife Martha and her sister Minna were with him. Visitors who bathed in the healing waters included the Habsburg Emperor, Eleanor Roosevelt, the writer Thomas Mann and Bismarck, the German Chancellor, who said of Disraeli at the Congress of Vienna ‘der alte Jude, dass is der Mann’ (‘the old Jew, he is the man’). From 1916 to 1923, that other old Jew, Sigmund Freud, stayed a few weeks every summer at the villa of Dr Anton Wassing, a Jewish doctor who took in paying guests, presumably because not enough patients needed his medical services. The very hospitable owner today, Christian Ehrlater, showed me the record for 31 July 1920 when, as well as Freud, a Jewish pharmacist from Vienna was staying there. That July was six months after Freud had suffered the blow of losing his daughter tragically young: Sophie was just 27 years old when she died. Freud worked on two of his books at Wassing’s villa. Christian showed me the small single room 17, where the founder of psychoanalysis slept. ‘The bed is the same, though the mattress is new’, Christian pointed out. He added that, in 1920, Freud’s wife did not accompany him, but her sister Minna did. She stayed next door in room 16; Christian smiled as he said that back then there was a door connecting the two rooms. One of the unresolved issues about Freud’s life is whether he had an affair with his sister-in-law. That summer of 1920, six months after Sophie died, he was certainly in need of some comfort. Many letters between Freud and Anna are likely to reflect the close, perhaps too close, relationship between father and daughter. We cannot judge for sure because so much of the correspondence between them in the Library of Congress is embargoed, either until 2056 or in perpetuity. When her father died, Anna was at his bedside trying to persuade him to wait a little longer before his doctor gave him the morphine Freud wanted. It was a loving leave-taking.
