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Miss Jula Weiss, secretary for many years to Sigmund and later to Anna Freud, and Finance Officer to the (then) Hampstead Child Therapy Course and Clinic, died after a short illness, on February 8, 1994, a few weeks before her 90th birthday. She played a significant part in the Freud family history as well as in that of the Centre. The obituary that follows was written by Gina Bon, who succeeded Jula Weiss as secretary to Miss Freud.
Letters addressed to Jula from the Austrian authorities who paid her pension spelled her name ‘Julie Weisz’; she was aware that I'd noticed this - perhaps when I drove her, twice a year, to the Haverstock Hill Police Station where she had to report to have an official document signed, proving that she was still alive and entitled to her pension. She explained that even before she came to England with the Freuds, she had felt that the name ‘Julie’ did not suit her. There had been no difficulty in changing it, nor the spelling of her surname: that, certainly, saved a lot of tiresome explanations about it. She said she was glad to get rid of ‘Julie’; it was too ‘romantic’, and anyway, she felt ‘too old for a name like that’. But when you were young, I thought at the time, why shouldn't it have suited you then?
When Jula Weiss’ funeral was being arranged, I was asked to say ‘a few words’, since it was assumed I knew her better than anyone else still living. I protested: I knew next to nothing about her background, or her life apart from the years we had spent working for