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Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
May 8, 1929
Dear Dr. Wechsler
I am looking forward to the arrival of your new book in the expectation that it will fulfill the promise given in that chapter of your earlier book.
As regards your wish that I should leave the manuscripts of my publications to our university in Jerusalem, it is not so easy for me to answer. Your assumption that this university is dear and important to me is correct, but it may be that we do not agree about the assessment of such manuscripts. To me they do not mean anything; it actually would never have occurred to me to offer them to the university as a gift. I used to cast them into the wastepaper basket after they had been printed until one day someone suggested that they could be put to another use. This man told me that among the rich there are fools who, in the event of my becoming famous, would be willing to pay cash for such pages covered by my hand. Since then I have been preserving them and am awaiting such pleasant consequences of my fame, bearing in mind that there is no other way of my leaving or presenting anything to our own institutions such as the Verlag, the Viennese Institute, or the Berlin Sanatorium; indeed, such a legacy might be quite welcome to my seven grandchildren. Before the war I was told that a well-known collector of waste paper was actually considering the acquisition of my rubbish. But then came the war and no other suggestion of this kind has cropped up again. As it doesn't cost anything I am still waiting and wondering if perhaps one day after my death these treasures may rise in value to the extent that their preservation will have been worth while.
Thus I cannot really bestow upon these manuscripts a pretium affectionis, nor do I feel that I am depriving the University of Jerusalem of anything by not presenting it with these papers. Or rather only of some commodity whose value at the moment is still very doubtful. Should the University of Jerusalem have a different