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On December 24, 2006, the New York Times published an article by Ralph Blumenthal concerning a paper by Franz Ma-ciejewski, who had found an entry in the log book of the Hotel Schweizerhaus in Maloja, Switzerland, showing that Freud and his sister-in-law Minna Bernays were registered as “Dr. Sigm.
Freud und Frau” in room No. 11 on Saturday, August 13, 1898. Other newspapers and magazines, American, German, French, reprinted this item as proof of what had been a gossip story for decades: starting with a transference fantasy of Sandor Ferenczi in a 1912 letter to Freud (Brabant, Falzeder, and Giampieri-Deutsch 1993, 453), followed by an interview given by the aged C. G. Jung and purporting to report a confession made to him by Minna herself (Billinsky 1969), and finally elaborated in papers by Peter Swales (1982; 1998; 2003), beginning more than twenty years ago. In its Winter 2006 issue, American Imago published an English translation of Maciejewski's paper.
Since I am the editor of the correspondence between Freud and Minna Bernays (Hirschmuller 2005), I examined this new document in the light of the assessment I had offered in my introduction to that volume. The letters do show a relationship of mental and personal intimacy, as between siblings, but they do not in any way hint at a love affair, nor do any of the other available historical sources. Now, a historian sometimes has to draw his conclusions from sources even if there are gaps or contradictions in them. Whether or not one should trust Jung's testimony is debatable.1 Still, before drawing far-reaching conclusions, historians should try to establish the facts as far as possible.
At the very least, it seems premature to take sharing a room as proof of a sexual relationship, as Maciejewski does. What was the situation Freud and Minna found in Maloja? Was there an option to book separate rooms? Did they share rooms and register as man and wife in the other hotels they stayed in during their journey?
Maciejewski