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London N.W. 3
December 27, 1938
Dear Madam (or Miss?)
Your mysterious and beautiful book1 has pleased me to an ex-tent that makes me unsure of my judgment. I wonder whether it is the transfiguration of Jewish suffering or surprise that so much psychoanalytical insight should have existed at the court of the brilliant and despotic Staufer [Friedrich II, Von Hohenstaufen] which makes me say that I haven't read anything so substantial and poetically accomplished for a long time!
And with it such a diffident letter! Can it be that your modesty causes you to underrate your own value? Who are you? Where did you acquire all the knowledge expressed in your book? Judging by the priority you grant to death, one is led to conclude that you are very young.
Won't you give me the pleasure of paying me a visit one day? I have time in the mornings.
Yours very sincerely
Freud
Der Kaiser, die Weisen and der Tod (The Kaiser, the Wise Men and Death), 1937.