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Haifa, Mount Carmel, Wollstein House
10. ii. 34
Dear Father Freud,
Your long letter delighted and comforted me in spite of the unwelcome things you were obliged to report. I say
delighted, because in the passionate intensity of your response, as it is reflected in your handwriting, there is comfort and confirmation for me of my own explosive temperament, which is always ready to erupt, and I am comforted because the superiority of your mind is never revealed more clearly than when you tell of things that have infuriated you, and with justification. This Dr. Ludwig Bauer certainly has the reputation of being one of the best journalists writing in German today; I heard his collected essays much praised while I was at Sanary. I have not read any of his books, but I know them by name and I had always wanted to remedy this. He used to sit in a café in Sanary, a bloated lump with a beard—I never wanted to make his acquaintance. And now you remove the last of the illusions I had about him—and now let us be done with him.
The worst thing about our anti-Nazi journals seems to me to be that one cannot rely on any one of the contributors' being a really strong character. They would be much better if they were not written by hypertrophied intellectuals, but had instead something of the ‘fairness’ of English journalism. They always remind me somewhat of a harem with pretty women all carrying on intrigues. Carl von Ossietzky's1 special position in German journalism was founded on his integrity. And now we shall not read a line more of his either.
And now you too are going to leave us in the lurch as a writer? You have every right to do so. Your collected opus represents in my opinion the greatest extension of human knowledge ever accorded us on the most important subject of all, i.e. the subject of our own mental and psychic life. You know, too, that I consider you the culmination of Austrian literature, whose raison d'être has always resided in its mastery of psychological analysis.