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7 March 19281
Dear Professor,
Your very kind telegram moved me greatly.2 Although I know that, to my deep regret, I have not found much favour in your eyes of late years, it showed that you retained some affection for me.
When you lost Sophie you wrote to me [and]3 that you wished you could die too. At the time I only partly understood this, but now I do so fully. I am finding it hard, and as yet impossible, to discover enough motive to go on living and to endure the present and future suffering that this blow has brought. My dear wife feels this even more so. Our boy is happy and sunny and certainly does not need us. It is strange how little consolation he is in spite of our love for him. The politics and personalities of ψα work have brought more pain than pleasure in the last years, and what else is there?
I thought I had tasted ten years ago all that the suffering of grief could bring,4 but life always knows some trump card with which to destroy such illusions. To lose one's first-born, one's only daughter, when one is nearly