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Historical evidence is based on ascertained facts, while inferences drawn from facts are opinions, or interpretative fictions; the latter either fit the facts or do not. In the current trial of Sigmund Freud and his sister-in-law Minna Bernays in the court of public opinion and the press, the fact is that on August 13, 1898 the couple were registered in Freud's hand to spend the night in a double room in a Swiss hotel. Some have reached a verdict beyond reasonable doubt: they had sex that night. But there were no witnesses, and the two cannot take the stand. There was no smoking gun. It is this juror's opinion that even highly probable does not mean proven.
Since Franz Maciejewski insinuates that “encounters of an intimate nature” (499) may have taken place between Freud and Minna, questions surface immediately. Was their first joint trip a planned escapade? Was it a one-night-stand? Did they have clandestine sex in Vienna at Berggasse 19 before or after? On the many other trips they took together in Austria and elsewhere? Was Freud's wife Martha blind? Did she know and forgive? What if registering as “Dr. Freud and wife” was merely an expedient stratagem, for given the Swiss cohabitation laws of that time, would an innkeeper have rented a double room to Dr. Freud and Frl. Bernays? On a related matter: the door of Minna's bedroom did not open into a hallway but opened directly into her sister's and brother-in-law's bedroom (Davies