You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
In thanking the S. Fischer Stiftung for funding this edition, the editors admit that without it ‘our uncontemporarily extensive editorial approach’ [‘unser unzeitgemäß umfangreiches Editionsvorhaben’] would not have been possible. They and the publisher deserve the highest praise for having so decisively bucked the spirit of the age: the scholarly apparatus is comprehensive and exemplary. My own gratitude for this achievement is implicit in all that follows - and also the hope that, by its example, this edition may perhaps effect some change in the times.
To begin with a curious detail. A small photograph of a Victorian couple appears on the front cover of the book. The woman is standing, gazing self-consciously ahead, her right hand resting tentatively on the man's shoulder, her fingers curled and avoiding full contact with his shoulder. He is sitting, looking to one side, his right arm bent as if about to elbow his way out of the picture. When this photo was previously published it was dated 1885, and attributed to Freud's visit to Wandsbek on his way to Paris that year (Freud, E. et al., 1976, P1. 89). By then the couple had been writing intimate letters for three and a half years and it always seemed strange to me that even by this point Martha still appeared so timid. Was this symptomatic of their relationship or just indicative of acceptable behaviour at the time?
Jean Bollack, in one of the most sensitive reviews of the first volume of the Brautbriefe, carefully situates the correspondents in their