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367A
Berlin-Grünewald
29 December 1919
Dear Professor,
Your letter of the 15th reached me yesterday! That really does not permit the assumption that the postal services are improving. Mean-while, your son Ernst has turned up here as a live source of news. Unfortunately we could only see him at our home once, as my wife was ill in bed over Christmas, and still is. It is a benign but stubborn catarrh of the sinuses and larynx. We are hoping that as soon as this business is finished with we shall have Ernst to see us more often. Rank passed us by; I should have been so glad to see him. There seems to be no real prospect of Reik coming either.
I very often think of poor Freund. I would like to write to him but do not want to remind him unnecessarily of his fate. Yet it does seem wrong to me to take no notice of his life and suffering, especially as he showed me so much friendship in Budapest. Could you advise me what to do? You are sure to know whether he is sensitive to his illness being mentioned.
I was afraid that Schmiedeberg would gossip prematurely in Vienna. Eitingon had told him something in confidence, and I only heard about it after S. had already left, so I could not ask him to keep it secret. Now I shall tell you the whole story, and you will appreciate why I did not want to count my chickens before they were hatched.
Through his political activities1 Simmel has some contacts with the Ministry of Education and the Arts. Some important people there told him, partly as a result of his article in the Vossische Zeitung,2 that the Ministry would be very favourably disposed to the founding of a Chair