To Hanns Sachs—On the Occasion of his Fiftieth Birthday

We analysts have many of the failings of mankind. It is not the least of our troubles that we belong to a group that has developed under specially difficult sociological conditions; indeed it still exists in an environment that is little changed. While we are fully aware of these and like circumstances, we must maintain that we do not lack the faculty of recognizing gratefully the pioneers who first took the field, and from whom we learnt how to fight the battles of psycho-analysis and, more important still, to extend yet further the knowledge we had gained.

I wish now to allude briefly to one who has trained many of our Berlin analysts during the last ten years, and who is well known and highly valued far beyond Berlin in the International Psycho-analytical Association. It is Dr. Hanns Sachs, who celebrated his fiftieth birthday a few days ago. I shall here wish him luck in the name of the German Psycho-Analytical Society, and on behalf of our International Psycho-Analytical Association: and in this we wish him something that a person so clever and with so few illusions is well able to attain. In every way he certainly has great ability. But on this occasion we want to thank him for what he has done for us and for our work; we Berlin analysts specially have much to thank him for.

Hanns Sachs was born on January 10, 1881. He went to the Gymnasium, where he was a brilliant pupil. Sachs' attitude to work is very typical of him. It is one of his most outstanding characteristics that he dislikes being coerced, and therefore being compelled to work; yet he is one of the hardest workers among us. He does everything so easily and with so little effort, as if he liked nothing better, willingly undertaking the most manifold duties in our Berlin Institute, and accomplishing them informally, with nonchalance, and yet with great skill as a teacher.

Sachs left the Gymnasium in 1899. He studied Law, and in 1904 he was made Dr. jur. and k.k. Hof-und Gerichtsadvokat. He j