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Zürich,
24.5.33
Dear Professor Freud,
I heard the news of Ferenczi's death last night. I am deeply grieved at the loss of your distinguished champion, and I wish to share my sorrow with you. With Abraham he was the man who most thoroughly imbibed, not only your ideas, but also your spirit and, thus impelled and qualified, planted the banner of psycho-analysis in more and more new countries. In particular his brilliant discoveries about the psychology of philosophical thought, and metaphysical thought in particular, made me a grateful admirer of the modest man, and I was glad to have the opportunity during the war of forwarding his correspondence to America, though in doing so I had no suspicion that I was playing the part of a postillon d'amour. I hope he crossed into the land of the unconscious without pain.
The loss of this doughty champion is quite specially painful in these bedevilled, mindless times….
I paid a brief visit to Germany last week, and it will be a long time before I am able to get rid of the feeling of disgust I got there. The proletarian militarism there stinks even more evilly than the blue-blooded Junker spirit of the Wilhelmine era. Cowardly towards the outside world, it wreaks its infantile rage on defenceless Jews, and even loots the libraries. Good luck to him who in the face of such crass idiocy still has the strength to be a doctor of souls….