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Berggasse 19,
Vienna IX,
2.1.1919
Dear Dr Pfister,
Nothing has gone astray. The explanation of my disgraceful failure to answer your last letter is very complicated. In the first place, I was very interested in your proposal to examine my relations to positivism, and proposed to write to you about that at length. Secondly, I was annoyed at the scant success of my effort to put you right in the matter of sexual theory, and proposed to wait until the affect had died down. And then something happened which for a long time took away the desire to write, that is, you know that a great many things have been happening with us of a kind capable of gripping and upsetting one, but one direct consequence of these great convulsions struck me particularly hard.
My son Ernst went off on student's leave to Munich to qualify, and one day at the beginning of the collapse my son Oliver came home from Hungary safe and sound. But my eldest son did not come back and did not write, and when he did not turn up in the mass of returning men we had to assume that something had happened to him. Slowly the darkness cleared. First of all we heard that his regiment was one of those which had been taken prisoner during the last few days of the war-some said actually after the conclusion of the armistice. Had he been taken prisoner with his unit? Was he one of those who escaped and had been shot down by his own side, or by the now hostile population? One could suspect what one liked, according to one's mood. At last, on November 21, a postcard (its predecessors had gone astray) arrived from him from an Italian field hospital, saying he was much better and would soon be taken away. A card received by a friend of his on the same day spoke of great dangers escaped and severe ordeals. But why was he in hospital? Had he had an accident? Had he been wounded, or taken ill? Of course I wrote to him at once and, through Dr Sachs's good offices, to the Red Cross. I do not think he has heard from us