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This panel ranked among the “most appropriate” ones of the congress, as Peter Loewenberg said in his introduction, since it was to highlight a “brief and brilliant moment” in psychoanalytic history that had taken place in Prague from 1933-1938. However, instead of rewriting the history of Czechoslovakian psychoanalysis, which has been well examined, the panel's aim, according to Ludger M. Hermanns, the brain and organizer behind it, was to explore four prominent members of the Prague Study Group. Hermanns described how Prague at that time - like Paris - had turned into a central “hub” for refugees from German Nazi persecution, who either stayed or, after a while, re-emigrated to other places. Prague was considered a rather secure location, furnished with a liberal and democratic political system and, furthermore, with a large group of German-speaking inhabitants, making it seem very suitable for fleeing Jewish and leftist analysts. Before he gave his portrayal of the first leader of the group - Frances Deri - Hermanns commemorated those colleagues who had not been able to leave Prague safely before the German invasion: Marie and Otto Brief were murdered in Buchenwald. Therese and Hugo Bondy were killed in Auschwitz together with their son - Hermanns displayed for the first time a 1931 photograph of Therese given to him by her Argentinian niece. Gottfried R. Bloch , who was joining the Prague group after the war, survived Auschwitz and published his experience in America (Bloch, 1999). Finally, Stefanie (Steff) Bornstein died from illness in Prague in July 1939.
The Viennese psychologist Frances Deri was the first to emigrate to Prague in 1933. She had just concluded her training in Berlin where she had lived and worked since the early 1920s. As a recently qualified analyst, she assumed responsibility for building up a new working group in Prague in a leading role. Hermanns cited from her letters to former Berlin colleague Max Eitingon, who was head of the IPA traini