Letter from Sigmund Freud to Sándor Ferenczi, January 30, 1908

Notes

• This line of the letterhead is preprinted. See “Note on Transcription.”

• Several members of the family had influenza; Mathilde (1887-1978), Freud's eldest child, was suffering from an abdominal irritation after an appendectomy (Freud/Jung, January 25, 1908, p. 113), perityphlitis, an inflammation of the peritoneal lining of the appendix and vermiform appendix (letter of Karl Abraham, March 8, 1908, to Max Eitingon, in Hilde Abraham, Karl Abraham [Munich, 1976], p. 81). In 1909 Mathilde married Robert Hollitscher (1875-1959), a businessman. The couple died childless, having emigrated to London with Freud in 1938.

• Martha Freud (1861-1951), daughter of Berman (1826-1879) and Emmeline Bernays, née Philipp (1830-1910). The Bernayses were a prominent Jewish family; Isaak, Martha's paternal grandfather (1792-1849), was appointed chief rabbi of Hamburg in 1821. Of his sons, Jacob (1824-1881) became a professor of philology, and Michael (1834-1897) became a professor of literary history. Berman Bernays, a merchant, moved to Vienna with his family in 1869 and there became secretary to the national economist Lorenz von Stein. Martha became engaged to Freud in 1882 in Vienna, but in 1883 she went to Wandsbek in Germany at the behest of her mother. During their separation the engaged couple maintained an almost daily correspondence (see a selection of Freud's letters in Freud, Letters, and in Brautbriefe, ed. Ernst L. Freud [Frankfurt, 1988]).