You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
439A
Berlin-Grünewald
4 April 1924
Dear Professor,
My first reaction to your letter which I received yesterday was deep regret that your health is troubling you again. I was particularly sorry—both for your sake and for the sake of us all—to hear that you think you may have to stay away from the Congress. My next thought was that the discussion before the Congress could be held among ourselves and, on your arrival, we could just report the result to you. You would thus be spared anything that might be detrimental to your health. If you agree to this suggestion, everyone else will as well. In the meantime, I shall not stop hoping that your indisposition will soon pass, so that we may after all expect you for the Congress itself.
Subsequently your letter expresses a distrust of me that I find extremely painful and, at the same time, strange. I had believed that the correspondence we had some time ago had been concluded in a satisfactory manner, and suddenly I must hear the most serious reproaches! I must however admit that your letter has not evoked even a shadow of guilt in me. It is easy for me, dear Professor, to show you that I am the victim of a lapse of your memory and that all your accusations rest on a displacement of facts in my disfavour.
Your main reproach is that I should have tried to obtain a communication person to person. By avoiding this, I had acted in an unfriendly way towards Sándor and Otto. This reproach would have been justified if I had written spontaneously to you, dear Professor, to tell you of my doubts. But the facts are exactly the reverse. You yourself on 15 February directed a long circular letter at us all, and each of us replied in his own way to it; I in my way, which I had after all the right to do. At your express desire, I then wrote more extensively. There was, therefore, no behaviour on my part that could give the impression of evading the others or of insinuation, but only a legitimate reaction to your circular letter! Therefore this