‘Do You Think That I Think Too Much about Patronage?’: Sigmund Freud / Martha Bernays: Die Brautbriefe, vol. 4: ‘Spuren von unserer komplizierten Existenz’, edited by Gerhard Fichtner, Ilse Grubrich-Simitis and Albrecht Hirschmüller in collaboration with Wolfgang Kloft (Frankfurt a. Main:  S. Fischer, 2019;  667 pp.)

Between the third and fourth volumes of the engagement letters of Sigmund Freud and Martha Bernays (Die Brautbriefe) there is an invisible gap - Freud spent the month of September 1884 with Martha in Wandsbek. What happened during that lost interval?

Their reunion had followed the longest separation of their engagement. The period leading up to it had been a time of high hopes and desperate anxiety. Freud described himself as the fairy-tale giant, whose vulnerable heart was a little bird locked in a distant cage (Vol. 3: 770F, 26 July 1884). He was assailed by shapeshifting adversaries separating him from Martha: ‘For two years I have been fighting for you against the rabble that one moment is called Fritz, the next Max, now Eli, then Mama…’ (3: 772F, 27 July 1884).1

For her part, Martha was confused by the vehemence and incomprehension she had encountered in his letters. Over the preceding year she had been subjected to a regular cycle of crises, always followed by pleas for forgiveness and reassertions of love. She had her own, well-founded interpretation of