Sigmund Freud, born May 6, 1856, was Jakob Freud's third child. From a previous marriage, in 1832 to Sally Kanner, he had two sons, Emanuel and Philipp. After Sally died in 1852, a brief second marriage to a woman named Rebekka also ended with her death. Jakob's third marriage, to Amalie Nathanson on July 29, 1855, produced eight more children. In addition to Sigismund (Sigmund), the firstborn, were born Julius, Anna, Rosa, Marie, Adolfine, Pauline, and Alexander.
Freud, Emanuel
Born in 1833 in Tysmenitz in Galicia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Emanuel Freud worked in his father's textile business. In 1852, he married (Kokach), who was born in Milow in Russia in 1834 (perhaps 1836). In Freiberg he settled a few blocks from his father's home at 42, place du Marché. His children's nurse, Monika Zajicova, was said to also have been Sigismund's "Nannie."
Freud's oldest nephew, Johann, was born in Freiberg on August 13, 1855. I have also long known," wrote Freud to Fliess in 1897, "the companion of my mis-deeds between the ages of one and two years; it is my nephew, a year older than myself, who is now living in Manchester and who visited us in Vienna when I was fourteen years old. The two of us seem occasionally to have behaved cruelly to my niece, who was a year younger" (Freud, 1985c, p. 268) "Until the end of my third year we had been inseparable; we had loved each other and fought each other, and, as I have already hinted, this childish relation had determined all my later feelings in my intercourse with persons of my own age" (1900a, p. 424). Freud also wrote, "An intimate friend and a hated enemy have always been indispensable to my emotional life; I have always been able to create them anew, and not infrequently my childish ideal has been so closely approached that friend and enemy have coincided in the same person; but not simultaneously, of course, as was the case in my early childhood" (1900a, p. 483). Johann's whereabouts cannot be traced after 1919, and what happened to him in later years is unknown.
On November 20, 1856, Pauline Freud, Sigmund's niece, was born in Freiberg; she would die a spinster in Manchester in 1944. The games she played with John and Sigmund in the meadow covered in yellow flowers, which Freud recalled in "Screen Memories" (1899a), are thought to have taken place during the summer of 1859. Freud's unconscious fantasy of Pauline's defloration by John and himself led some to believe that both boys sexually assaulted the little girl (Krüll, 1979). Towards 1875, it seems that Jakob Freud had the idea of sending Sigmund to England with his brothers and having him marry Pauline.
On February 22, 1859, Bertha Freud was born in Freiberg. She died accidentally from a fall on a staircase in 1944.
Toward 1859-1860, while Jakob and his family left Freiberg for Vienna, Emanuel emigrated with relatives and his brother Philipp to Manchester, England. Solomon Samuel (Sam) Freud, Emanuel's fourth son, was born there on June 28, 1860. His correspondence with Sigmund Freud was eventually published (Freud 1996 [1911-38]. He died in 1945.
On May 12, 1862, Matilda Freud was born in Manchester.
In 1900 Freud described Emanuel to Wilhelm Fliess (Freud 1985c, p. 417) on the occasion of his half-brother's trip to Vienna with his son Sam: "He brought with him a real air of refreshment because he is a marvelous man, vigorous and mentally indefatigable despite his sixty-eight or sixty-nine years, who has always meant a great deal to me."
Freud paid visits to Emanuel in August 1875 and to his sister Rosa in 1884-1885. He went to England for a second two-week visit to his brothers in September 1908.
Emmanuel died from a fall from a train traveling between Manchester and Southport on October 17, 1914, just six days before the anniversary of Jacob's death—a coincidence noted by Freud.
Marie, Emanuel's wife, died in Manchester in 1923.
Freud, Philipp
Philipp Freud was born in Tysmenitz around 1835. He would play an interesting role in his brother's life that Freud would only reconstruct in October 1897 during his self-analysis. It was Philipp who "locked up Nannie in prison" for stealing shortly before the family's departure from Freiberg. He was living across the street from Freud's parents and was the same age as Freud's mother, Amalie. Some authors have imagined from Freud's fantasy that Philipp and Amalie were together as a "couple" with the suggestion that he had an affaire with her (Krüll, 1979). He contributed in any event to the confusion of generations in Freud's mind that was only clarified in 1875 during his visit to England.
Philipp married at about forty years old, in Manchester on January 15, 1873, to Matilda Bloome (Bloomah), from Birmingham (1839-1925). They had two children. Pauline Mary (Poppy) was born on October 23, 1873, married Frederick Oswald Hartwig and died in Bucklow/Chester on June 23, 1951. Morris Herbert Walter was born on April 2, 1876, and died in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, on November 28, 1938.
Philipp died in Manchester on August 29, 1911.
Freud (1989a, pp. 126-127) described this part of his family in an 1875 letter to Eduard Silberstein: "You will, no doubt, wish to know about my relatives in England and about my attitude toward them. I don't think I've ever told you much about them. There two brothers on my father's side, from my father's first marriage, twenty-two years older than I, the older, Emanuel, having married in early youth, the younger, Philipp, two and a half years ago. They used to live with us in Freiberg, where the elder brother's three oldest children were born! The unfavorable turn their business took there caused them to move to England, which they have not left since 1859. I can say that they now hold a generally respected position, not because of their wealth, for they are not rich, but because of their personal character. They are shopkeepers, i.e., merchants who have a shop, the elder selling cloth and the younger jewelry, in the sense that word seems to have in England. My two sisters-in-law are good and jolly women, one of them an English woman, which made my conversations with her extremely agreeable. Of those persons in our family whose uncle I may call myself, you are already acquainted with John, he is an Englishman in every respect, with a knowledge of languages and technical matters well beyond the usual business education. Unknown to you, and until recently, to me, are two charming nieces, Pauline, who is nineteen, and Bertha, who is seventeen, and a fifteen-year-old boy by the name of Samuel—which I believe has been fashionable in England ever since Pickwick—and who is generally considered to be a 'sharp and deep' young fellow" (pp. 126-7).
Sigmund Freud was born on May 6, 1856, the first of Jacob and Amalie Freud's eight children.
Freud, Julius
Julius Freud was born in October 1857 in Freiberg, when Sigmund was eighteen months old. He died the next April, the same year that Amalie's brother, Julius's namesake, also died.
On October 3, 1897, Freud (1985e, p. 268) wrote to Wilhelm Fliess about one of the discoveries of his self-analysis: "that I greeted my one-year-younger brother (who died after a few months) with adverse wishes and genuine childhood jealousy; and that his death left the germ of [self-] reproaches in me."
Bernays-Freud, Anna
Anna Bernays-Freud was born on December 31, 1858, in Freiberg and died on March 11, 1955, in New York. Her relationship with her older brother was often difficult, but she was her father's favorite daughter. In her memoirs (Bernays-Freud, 1940), she recalled Sigmund's special privileges, the fact that he enjoyed his own room, and that it was forbidden to play the piano in order not to disturb him; he also censored what she read.
Anna married Martha's oldest brother, Eli Bernays (1860-1923) on October 14, 1883, with whom Freud, who didn't attend their wedding, felt for a time resentful regarding his sister's dowry.
Anna and Eli emigrated in the United States in 1892 with their two children, Lucy, born in 1886, and Judith born a year earlier. In 1973 the latter, Judith Bernays-Heller, published a brief memoir of her visits to grandparents Jacob and Amalie (Bernays-Heller, 1973). Anna and Eli had three more children: Edward Louis was born in 1891, and Hella and Martha in 1893 and 1894, respectively.
Eli, who enjoyed a brilliant career in business, was in charge of Freud's works in the United States and he had some disagreements with Ernest Jones concerning their English translations. After Eli's death, in 1925 Freud wrote to his son Edward in reply to the latter's proposition: "What deprives all autobiographies of value is their tissue of lies. Let's just say parenthetically that your publisher shows American naivete in imagining that a man, honest until now, could stoop to so low for five thousand dollars. The temptation would begin at one hundred times that sum, but even then I would renounce it after half an hour." On March 8, 1920, he wrote to Ernest Jones, describing Edward as "an honest boy when I knew him. I know not how far he has become Americanized" (Gay 1989, p. 568) and in September he announced, to Jones's chagrin, that his nephew would serve as literary executive for American rights to his works.
Graf-Freud, Regina Deborah (Rosa)
Regina Deborah Graf-Freud (Rosa) was born on March 21, 1860, and died in the Treblinka concentration camp in 1942. Considered his favorite sister, Freud in 1886 acknowledged that the beautiful Rosa, like himself, had "a nicely developed tendency toward neurasthenia" (Freud 1960, p. 210). On October 22, 1874, Freud wrote to Eduard Silberstein: "Rosa has entered a school of drawing and design newly established for the perfection of feminine handicrafts. I have taken charge of the rest of her education and am sacrificing one of my lectures to that end. The gods cannot possibly have rejoiced at this sacrifice as much as I did" (Freud 1989a, p. 67). She would return the favor in various ways, by taking care of his laundry, for example, during his stay in Paris, later by caring for his children during vacations.
Rosa's fate was particularly unfortunate. After a disappointing love affair, she married Heinrch Graf (b. 1852), a physician, on May 17, 1896, but he died in 1908 at the age of fifty-six. Her son, Hermann Adolf, was born on July 13, 1897 and died in action during World War I, in early 1917. Finally, her daughter, Cäcilie, born October 18, 1899, and nicknamed Mausi, whom Freud called "my favorite niece," a dear girl of 23, was unmarried and pregnant when she committed suicide with an overdose of the barbiturate veronal on August 18, 1922.
The last document from Rosa is a letter transmitted by the International Red Cross to Freud's address in London. Twenty five words only were authorized: "Geliebte Martha! Tief bewegt grüssen Dich Alle. Erbitten Deiner Alexanders Familie Befinden. Vier einsam. Traurig. Leidlich. Gesund. —S. fruendschaftlich. Ganze Einrichtung bestens engleagert. Graf Rosa" ("Dear Martha! Greetings with heartfelt emotion. Wondering about the state of your Alexander's family. Four alone. Sad. Painful. Health. Yours warmly. Best furnishings in storage. Graf Rosa.")
Rosa was deported in Theresienstadt on August 28, 1942, at the same time as her three sisters, with whom she was living in a increasingly cramped apartment. According to a witness, during the Nuremberg trial, in October 1942 in the Treblinka concentration camp, the commandant of the camp to whom she introduced herself as Sigmund Freud's sister, examined her identification and "said that there was probably some mistake and showed her the railroad signs, telling her that there would be a train to take her back to Vienna in two hours. She could leave her belongings, go into the showers and, after bathing, her documents and her ticket to Vienna would be ready. Rose naturally went into the showers and never returned" (LeupoldLöwenthal, 1989).
Moritz-Freud Maria (Mitzi)
Maria Moritz-Freud (Mitzi) was born on March 22, 1861, and died in the Maly Trostinec, the extermination camp, in 1942. In 1885 she had to work as a governess, which led Freud, then in Paris, while observing nannies with young children, to write Martha: "I couldn't help thinking of poor Mitzi and grew very, very furious and full of revolutionary thoughts" (Freud 1960, p. 173).
In 1887 Mitzi married her Romanian cousin Moritz Freud(1857-1920). They had four children, Margarethe, born in 1887; Lilly Marlé-Freud, born in 1888, who became a well-known actress; Martha Gertrude, born in 1892, who illustrated children books under the name "Tom" and would commit suicide in 1930, a year after her husband the journalist Jakob Seidmann, killed himself; Theodor (Teddy) and born in 1904, whose twin was stillborn and who died from drowning in 1923 in Berlin. Martha's daughter, Angela Seidmann, was in the care of Freud and Anna for a while before emigrating to Haïfa.
Mitzi, reunited with her sisters in Vienna after her husband's death, shared their fate in the Holocaust. She was deported to the concentration camp of Theresienstadt, on June 29, 1942, then to Maly Trostinec where she disappeared (Leupold-Löwenthal, 1989).
Freud, Esther Adolfine (Dolfi)
Esther Adolfine (Dolfi) was born on July 23, 1862, and died in 1943 in the concentration camp at Treblinka. She was unmarried and cared for her father Jakob when he fell ill, then of her mother, becoming impetuous Amalie's constant companion, which her nephew Martin considered could not have been a welcome fate. "She was not clever or in any way remarkable, and it might be true to say that constant attendance on Amalie had suppressed her personality into a condition of dependence from which she never recovered" (M. Freud, 1958, p. 16).
Dolfi was deported with Mitzi and Paula to the concentration camp of Theresienstadt on August 28, 1942, where she died from "internal hemorrhages" on February 5, 1943, according to information gathered by Harry Freud after the war, perhaps due to malnutrition. (Leupold-Löwenthal, 1989).
Winternitz-Freud, Pauline Regine (Pauli)
Pauline Regine Winternitz-Freud (Pauli) was born on May 3, 1864, and died in the Holocaust in 1942. She was married to Valentin Winternitz and emigrated to the United States, where their daughter, Rose Beatrice (Rosi), was born on March 18, 1896. After her husband's death in 1900, on Freud's advice, she returned to Berlin, where she lived with her husband's family before joining relatives in Vienna. Deported from that city in June 1942, she was taken first to the concentration camp of Theresienstadt, then to the extermination camp or Maly Trostinec (Leupold-Löwenthal, 1989).
In 1913, Rosi, just seventeen years old, developed psychological problems that suggested psychosis. Ten years later and pregnant, she married Ernst Waldinger, a young poet, but the couple was not happy and, in 1931, she had a relapse. Rosi successfully emigrated to the United States and in 1946 entered analysis with Paul Federn in New York, probably with the financial assistance of Anna Freud.
Freud, Alexander Gotthold Efraim
Alexander Gotthold Efraim Freud was born on April 15 (or April 19), 1866, in Vienna, and died in 1943 in Canada. The youngest of the family, his name was chosen by Freud himself at a family meeting.
For a number of years Alexander was closest to his older brother, sharing with him, until Freud married, Easter and summer vacations, mainly in Italy after a first visit there in 1895. He took part in the 1897 trip during which Freud contemplated Luca Signorelli's frescoes, and in the visit to Rome at the end of August 1901. "It was a high point of my life" as wrote Freud to Wilhelm Fliess. He was also with his brother on the Acropolis, during the sudden "disturbance of memory" in Athens in September 1904.
Merry and whimsical and a music-lover, Alexander "was an excellent story-teller who could imitate the various accents of the characters in his stories, as his nephew would write (M. Freud, 1958, p. 17). He did not pursue an education but, intelligent and hardworking, became a specialist in transportation and worked at the Vienna Chamber of Commerce. On August 20, 1899, Freud wrote to Fliess: "Alexander was here for four days; he will lecture on tariff rates at the Export Academy and will be given the title and rank of professor extraordinarius after one year—much earlier in fact than I" (Freud, 1985c). With his expertise, he was responsible for organizing Freud's voyage to America in 1909.
Also in 1909, Alexander married Sophie Sabine Schreiber in a synagogue, in a double ceremony with his niece Mathilde. His wife gave birth on December 21, 1909, to Harry, their only child. With an excellent livelihood, he shared with Freud the support of their mother and Dolfi. He was, according to his brother, much more upset than he by Amalie's death in 1930. In 1936 he commissioned Wilhelm Victor Krauss to paint Freud's portrait.
In March 1938, shortly after the Alexander emigrated to Switzerland. Sigmund, at the time still in Vienna wrote Ernest Jones (April 28, 1938) that his brother caused him considerable worry; he had reacted badly to the loss of his business and was in poor health. By shared decision, the brothers left a large sum (160,000 Austrian Schillings) to their four sisters that would have been sufficient for a comfortable living in Vienna; they saw no serious danger to their remaining in Vienna. Freud soon realized his mistake and at his request Marie Bonaparte attempted to secure their passage from Austria, but without success.
Alexander gave up his Anglophobia and pro-German sentiments that dated to the First World War to emigrate to London in September 1938, where he also joined his son Harry. It was this latest who wrote to his aunts a letter they never receive and in which he described Sigmund's last days.
Alexander and his wife would emigrate to Canada, where he died in 1943.
Bibliography
Bernays-Freud, Anna. (November 1940). My brother Sigmund Freud. American Mercury 51 (203), 335-342.
Bernays-Heller, Judith. (1973). Freud's mother and father. In Freud as we knew him. (H.M. Ruitenbeck, Ed.). Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
Freud, Martin. (1958). Sigmund Freud: Man and father. New York: Vanguard Press.
Freud, Sigmund. (1900a). The Interpretation of Dreams. SE 4-5.
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