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Eichkamp
27. xii. 1930
Dear Mr. Freud, You did not want to put me to the test, I'm sure—why should you? You know that it is your life's work which first made mine possible and that I am happy to be able to feel this and to express it to you now and then. Today I take up my fountain pen to do it—and the pen does not seem to approve of this wretched paper at all—and I come out with a New Year greeting which naturally must begin with the word ‘may’. So may the year 1931 bring you, along with its inevitable troubles, as much joy as the one which has just passed. You have the right to pity your grandchildren; we, a generation who are hardened in every sense of the word, are determined to get on with this wretched life, taking it just as it is, and not to look for unpleasantnesses and also not to stick it out just out of heroism, but to seek out what is pleasant as man always has done. I have now changed my pen; now things are going smoothly; if mistakes occur, if I write m for n or vice versa—that is because my eye is unable to control the speed of my pen.
Your introduction makes me curious about what it introduces. Today I come to you with a request, which you will certainly not misunderstand. In the next few weeks I shall be moving into a workroom, which I have had built near our all too small house. There, for the first time in my life there will be room for all my books and even space for new purchases of editions in many volumes. If I order a set of your Gesammelte Schriften from your Verlag through Kiepenheuer