Fred Plaut: 1913-2009

In the early afternoon of Wednesday 12^th August 2009 at the Edgwarebury Cemetery in North West London, the urn with Fred's ashes was placed in a shallow grave, following a modest but moving ceremony attended by a small circle of family and friends. As the congregation started covering the urn with earth, thick drops of rain interrupted the hot and sunny day. Not for long. By the time everybody moved to the car park, the rain stopped.

This was the last episode of Fred's extensive, restless and intense engagement in and with this world. He had actually died on 22 June in Berlin where he was cremated but, according to his wishes, his ashes were interred in London, where he spent most of his working life. He was one of the first trainees of the Society of Analytical Psychology and one of the key figures in the development of analytical psychology in London from the 1950s onwards. He succeeded Michael Fordham as Editor of the Journal of Analytical Psychology in the 1970s, returning to Berlin in his 70s where he remained an active and influential figure in the analytic world right up to his death at the age of 96.

Alfred Bernhard Joseph Plaut was born in Düsseldorf on 8 February 1913 to one of the oldest Jewish families in Germany. His paternal grandfather was a teacher and chairman of the Jewish community in Detmold, a small town in the centre of Germany where the Plauts lived for generations. Both his parents were involved in the tailoring business. His mother, who seemed to be a powerful and able woman, had her own boutique, whereas his father ‘was regarded as not very bright’ (Plaut 2004, p. 8). Fred thought that this was due to the fact that his father, as a child, had contracted measles that resulted in partial deafness, which was also the reason that he was exempted from the initial conscription for the First World War. However, at the later stages of the War he could not avoid mobilization. He survived the war but returned home as an invalid remaining in bed for nea