Freud's Mistress (28 page)

LONDON, FEBRUARY 1941

M
inna arrived at Berggasse 19 as a young woman and stayed on for over forty years. Now she was dying.

It was a dreary morning when Martha went upstairs to check on her sister. The garden was covered with a sprinkling of fresh, wet snow, and a stagnant cloud of mist hung over the city. The moment she walked into Minna's room, she knew. It would not be long now. Her sister's hands were crossed over her chest in supplication, and her breathing was raspy and labored. The doctor said that Minna's heart condition had worsened in the past few days, and there wasn't much left to do except keep her comfortable.

Minna seldom left her room since Sigmund's death a little over a year before. He had endured a long, drawn-out battle with throat cancer, and Virginia Woolf, who visited Sigmund shortly before he died, had likened him to “a half-extinct volcano.” But he had always said that, like King Macbeth, he would rather “die with harness.” And he did just that. He spent his last days in his study, working and reading in his favorite chair in front of his office window. And, in his final hours, Martha and Minna were at his bedside. Where else would they be?

Martha pulled an extra blanket over her sister and turned up the radiator, which hissed and knocked in protest. She didn't think Minna even noticed she was there at first, but then Minna turned her head slightly and smiled. Some days were better than others, and perhaps today she would be in the mood to talk. Yesterday she actually sat up and read for a while.

Martha heard an explosion in the distance and the windowpanes rattled in their frames. The air raids were continuous now and there were blackouts every night. It was impossible to sleep, and every time she heard a blast, she would rush upstairs to check on Minna. One had to have nerves of steel to stay in this city.

Before the Freuds moved to their new home in London, life in Vienna had deteriorated dramatically. The chancellor had resigned, and Hitler's troops descended on Austria. Martha had watched through their parlor window as the Nazis marched down the Ringstrasse, cheered on by jubilant crowds. She had locked their door, fearful of the mobs who were breaking into Jewish homes and businesses.

As the Anschluss progressed, Sigmund was singled out as an enemy of the state. The Gestapo ransacked their apartment and confiscated their passports. Anna was arrested briefly, and friends began to disappear. Sigmund finally agreed that they must flee their home. But he had waited too long. Only through the help of highly placed friends and officials, including the American ambassadors in Paris and Berlin, President Roosevelt, and the U.S. State Department, were they allowed to leave. They made it clear to the German government that any mistreatment of the now-world-famous scientist would create an international incident. At this point in his life, Sigmund's hard-won reputation was without dispute.

The news from the Continent continued to horrify. Sigmund's four younger sisters had been deported to concentration camps, and Martha feared the worst. But never in all her imaginings had she thought that it would come to this.

“Minna, would you like some hot tea?” she asked. “The maid is bringing up a tray.”

Minna nodded, so Martha gently raised her to a sitting position and plumped the pillows behind her back.

“Do you feel like talking, my dear? I didn't sleep very well last night—did you? Another visit from the bombs,” Martha said, placing Minna's shawl over her sister's shoulders.

“They never stop, do they?” Minna said, with little interest. It was a question from someone who was surrendering this world and floating into another.

“Getting worse, I should think. One of the windows in the house next door completely shattered. Thank heavens, we've had no damage. Some mornings I'm surprised the house is still standing.”

Martha stared at Minna's sharp shoulder blades and skeletal frame. She looked so fragile, pale as bone, as if she were being swallowed up by the bed. She'd always been too thin, and now even more so. Who was that old woman? Martha was losing her sister, the one person with whom she had shared everything. They had lived together for so long and endured so much. And through it all, there were the three of them. She silently wrestled with competing emotions—gratitude, sorrow, envy, and love—more than she could bear. But, if the heavens should reverse themselves, and she was given the opportunity to relive her life, she knew that she would make the same decisions.

The maid rapped lightly on the door and entered with a tray of tea and biscuits. Martha took it from her and placed it on the bedside table. Then she handed Minna a cup of tea, pulled up a chair, and sat down next to her.

“Eat your biscuits,” she said with concern.

“You eat them, I'm not hungry.”

“Minna dear, you must have something in your stomach. I'll leave it here, you might want it later,” Martha said, pausing for a moment. “You know, I've been cleaning out Sigmund's study. Cataloging all the books and antiquities and storing the important papers. Saving everything of historic value. So much work.”

“I'm sorry I can't help you. It must be difficult to go in there.”

“It isn't easy but it's such an eyesore. You know how everything was everywhere. In any event, I have something for you.”

Martha put her hand in her skirt pocket and produced a thick bundle of yellowed envelopes tied up tightly in twine. The contents obviously had not been touched in years.

“It's your correspondence to Sigmund. He must have kept it all this time,” she said.

Minna handled the letters gingerly, then dropped them on the table, as though they were white-hot. She scanned Martha's face for any sign of anger but there was none.

“That's odd,” Minna said, a catch in her voice. “I thought they were destroyed in Vienna. He told me he burned everything of a personal nature.”

“Apparently not everything. When you're up to it, you might want to go through them.”

Martha took a deep breath and slowly let it out. She spoke of the letters as if they were a bit of business for the morning, a trifle. After all these years, if any feelings of recrimination still existed, they were muted now. She attempted a smile as she readjusted her sister's pillows and drew up the bedcovers.

Minna looked at her sister without blinking.

“Do you remember that young American who came to Vienna and offered Sigmund a book contract for his autobiography?” Martha asked. “When was that? Ten years ago?”

Minna nodded.

“I think it was summer, right before we went on holiday. It was stifling. I felt sorry for the poor boy, all dressed up in a wool suit. Sigmund was incredibly rude. In fact, I don't know why he agreed to the meeting at all. He had no intention of ever writing the thing.”

“They wouldn't pay him enough. That's what it was,” Minna said.

“No, it wasn't. He told me it would be an utter betrayal of everyone—family, friends, enemies—everyone. That's why he spent his life destroying letters. He said that autobiographies were all worthless lies and would require, on his part, so much indiscretion that the consequences would be unthinkable.”

“For his patients alone,” Minna said, in little more than a whisper.

“Yes. For his patients alone,” Martha agreed. “Now, why don't you get some rest?”

Minna stared out the window, her face distant and far away. Then she solemnly gathered the letters from the bedside table and called for her sister.

“Martha dear,” she said in a flat tone. “Would you mind disposing of these for me?”

“You don't want to read them?” Martha asked carefully.

“No,” Minna said, sinking back into her pillows, “and they're of no historical value.”

Martha slid the letters into her pocket and left her sister's room. It was her firm belief that there are some things in this life that should remain hidden. She would do anything to protect her husband's reputation. And she knew her sister would do the same. Countless accommodations were made. But even though these things were never mentioned or acknowledged, and even though time had altered their impact, it didn't mean they never happened. And it didn't mean she never knew.

Freud's Mistress
is a novel, based on the love affair between Sigmund Freud and his sister-in-law, Minna Bernays. The book portrays the period beginning in 1895 when Minna first came to live with the Freuds in Vienna. She stayed with them for more than forty years, and never married or had children of her own.

The Freuds escaped Nazi-occupied Vienna and fled to London in June 1938. Sigmund Freud died of throat cancer on September 23, 1939, at his home in Maresfield Gardens, with Minna and Martha at his bedside. Minna died a year later from heart failure. It was reported that, following Freud's death, she rarely left her room. Martha Freud lived in London, surrounded by her children and grandchildren, until her death in 1951, at the age of ninety.

For more than seventy years, rumors have circulated among biographers and historians concerning the nature of the relationship between Sigmund Freud and Minna Bernays. Tantalizing questions arose. Did they or did they not have an affair?

In 1989, Peter Gay, one of Freud's foremost biographers, set out to officially resolve, once and for all, this controversial mystery. The eminent scholar's research began in the Library of Congress, where he pored over a cache of letters between the two of them that had been recently released by the Freud Museum in London.

“I had the pleasure—every scholar will know what I felt—of being the first to go through the precious bundle,” he wrote in an article published in
The New York Times
on January 29, 1989.

The story behind the letters' release began in 1972, when Freud's youngest daughter, Anna, turned over a significant number of letters to the manuscript division of the Library of Congress. Notably, she withheld certain letters, offering the explanation that they were of a personal nature and not for public scrutiny. The cache remained at 20 Maresfield Gardens, Freud's final residence in London (now the Freud Museum), until four years after Anna's death, when the director of the Freud Archives personally transported them to the United States.

Gay wrote that as he sat in the grand, silent manuscript room, staring at Freud's familiar German script, a puzzling and unexpected setback occurred. It seemed there was a significant gap in the collection of letters, and it struck him that there was “something odd about the missing portions.” It appeared that someone had taken on the task of numbering the letters chronologically, and the numbers 93 through 161 were removed and unaccounted for. Those lost letters would have covered the years 1895 to 1900—the exact years that Minna and Freud were rumored to have had an affair.

That rumor was substantiated fifty years later by Swiss psychologist and former Freud disciple Carl Jung, who in 1957 stated that Minna Bernays confessed to him that she and Sigmund Freud were having an affair. The revelation appeared in an interview published by the
Andover Newton Quarterly
.

Soon I met Freud's wife's younger sister. She was very good-looking and she not only knew enough about psychoanalysis but also about everything that Freud was doing. When a few days later, I was visiting Freud's laboratory, Freud's sister-in-law asked me if she could talk with me. She was very much bothered by her relationship with Freud and felt guilty about it. From her I learned that Freud was in love with her and that their relationship was indeed very intimate. It was a shocking discovery to me, and even now I can recall the agony I felt at the time.

CARL JUNG, Interviewed by JOHN M. BILLINSKY,
ANDOVER NEWTON QUARTERLY
10 (39–43), 1969

Most Freud scholars rejected Jung's claims as “sour grapes” from a rival. It was well known that the two men had a bitter falling-out over Freud's sexual theories. Gay eventually concluded that the letters between Sigmund Freud and Minna Bernays no longer existed, and that anyone who might shed light on the tampering was probably dead. Even if the letters were found, he argued, it was “exceedingly unlikely that they would substantiate the rumor” of an affair.

This was the general assumption until the summer of 2006, when a German sociologist found proof that on August 13, 1898, Sigmund Freud, then forty-two, and Minna Bernays, thirty-three, traveled to a fashionable resort in Maloja, Switzerland, where they registered at a hotel as husband and wife. The worn, leather-bound ledger showed that they occupied room 11 on the third floor and signed in as “
Dr. Sigm. Freud u Frau
”—Dr. Sigmund Freud and wife.

The evidence was apparently persuasive enough for Gay to change his opinion. On December 24, 2006, in a subsequent
New York Times
article, he said, “It makes it very possible that they slept together.” It now seems certain that Minna Bernays was not only Freud's “closest confidante,” playing a critical role during his most significant years of discovery, but she was also his lover.

While Freud scholars may now agree that Sigmund Freud and Minna Bernays had an affair, very little is known about Minna Bernays. But it is clear that she was a fascinating character in her own right.

Freud's Mistress
is based on fact, but it is a work of fiction. In that vein, we took some dramatic license, such as with the children's ages and historical events that occurred several years before or after the time period covered in the book.

The ongoing controversy about Sigmund Freud's affair with Minna Bernays began in 1957 with Carl Jung's claim that Minna confessed to him that she was having an intimate relationship with Freud. Again, in 1982, the controversial Freud researcher Peter Swales argued in an article in the
New American Review
that Minna Bernays not only had an affair with Freud but had become pregnant and underwent an abortion. Swales's theory met with heated debate over the next few years, particularly from eminent Freud scholars Peter Gay and Paul Roazen. But with the discovery of the Swiss hotel log by Franz Maciejewski in August 2006, major scholars reassessed the facts, and there was a gradual reckoning that Freud indeed had two wives. The genesis for this book sprang from the subsequent articles in major newspapers and periodicals, some of which are listed below.

 

Blumenthal, Ralph. “Hotel Log Hints at Illicit Desire That Dr. Freud Didn't Repress.”
The
New York Times
, December 24, 2006.

Bond, Alma H., Ph.D. “Did Freud Sleep with His Wife's Sister? An Expert Interview with Franz Maciejewski, Ph.D
.
”
Medscape
, May 4, 2007.

Follian, John. “Analyze This: Freud ‘Bedded Sister-in-Law.'”
The Sunday Times
, January 7, 2007.

Gay, Peter. “Sigmund and Minna? The Biographer as Voyeur.”
The New York Times
, January 29, 1989.

Maciejewski, Franz. “Freud, His Wife and His ‘Wife.'”
American Imago
63 (4) (2006), 497–506.

Roazen, Paul. “Of Sigmund and Minna” (and Peter Gay's response).
The New York Times
, April 9, 1989, letters to the editor
.

Silverstein, Barry. “What Happens in Maloja Stays in Maloja: Inference and Evidence in the ‘Minna Wars.'”
American Imago
64 (2) (2007), 283–89.

 

We would also like to acknowledge a host of other, indispensable sources that formed the historical background for this book. First and foremost are the biographies of Sigmund Freud written by two acclaimed historians:
Freud: A Life for Our Time
by Peter Gay, and
Freud: Darkness in the Midst of Vision,
by Louis Breger. In addition, straying from official memoirs of the time is Paul Roazen's comprehensive and illuminating study of Freud's relationships with others,
Freud and His Followers
. These writers paint a vivid and detailed portrait of this brilliant but flawed man.

Enormously useful to our understanding of Freud's life was a visit to the Freud Museum (formerly the Freud home) in Maresfield Gardens, London. The Freud family moved to England in 1938 after they fled Nazi-occupied Vienna, and virtually all of Freud's possessions were smuggled or shipped there afterward by close friends and family—his library, antiquities (the statue of Athena), paintings, furniture, photographs (including one of Lou Andreas-Salomé), carpets, and the famous couch, a gift from a former patient. Today, the rooms, including his opulent study and consulting room, have been painstakingly preserved, untouched by time. Even Freud's spectacles remain on his desk, as if they were just laid down by the doctor himself.

Providing insight into Freud's personality, creativity, and thought processes were the surprisingly frank, intimate letters he wrote to his family, friends, and colleagues, especially the large volume of letters between Freud and Wilhelm Fliess, his then closest friend:
The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887–1904
, translated and edited by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, and
Letters of Sigmund Freud
, edited and selected by Ernst L. Freud.

We used as direct sources those works written by Sigmund Freud during the time period of this novel, particularly
The Interpretation of Dreams
, and the more easily understood version,
On Dreams
. In addition, we consulted
Freud on Women: A Reader
, edited by Elisabeth Young-Bruehl,
The Psychopathology of Everyday Life
, and
Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis
.

Other biographies and writings about Sigmund Freud valuable to our research include
The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud
, by Ernest Jones;
Sigmund Freud: Man and Father
, by Martin Freud;
The Death of Sigmund Freud: The Legacy of His Last Days
, by Mark Edmundson;
Berggasse 19: Sigmund Freud's Home and Offices, Vienna
1938
, by Edmund Engelman (photographs);
Martha Freud: A Biography
, by Katja Behling;
The Freudian Mystique: Freud, Women, and Feminism
, by Samuel Slipp, M.D.; “Jung and Freud (The End of a Romance)”
by John M. Billinsky,
Andover Newton Quarterly
10 (1969), 39–43; and
The Freud Journal,
by Lou Andreas-Salomé,
translated by Stanley A. Leavy.

Within the confines of a work of fiction, we have attempted to make this book as historically accurate as possible regarding fin de siècle Vienna, including the political and social environment surrounding the Hapsburg Empire before its eventual collapse.

The following books were particularly useful.
Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture
, by Carl E. Schorske;
Schnitzler's Century
, by Peter Gay;
A Nervous Splendor:
Vienna 1888
–
1889
, by Frederic Morton;
Wittgenstein's Vienna
, by Allan Janik and Stephen Edelston Toulmin;
Pleasure Wars: The Bourgeois Experience: From Victoria to Freud
, by Peter Gay;
The Habsburgs: Embodying Empire
, by Andrew Wheatcroft;
Austria-Hungary Handbook for Travellers
, by Karl Baedeker;
Alma Mahler-Werfel: Diaries, 1898–1902
;
Fräulein Else
, by Arthur Schnitzler; and
The Radetzky March
, by Joseph Roth.

Finally, most helpful in re-creating the details of a bourgeois Viennese doctor's home were the following:
Inside the Victorian Home
, by Judith Flanders;
English Women's Clothing in the Nineteenth Century
, by C. Willett Cunnington;
Mrs. Woolf and the Servants
, by Alison Light;
Beeton's Book of Household Management,
edited by Mrs. Isabella Beeton;
Victorian and Edwardian Fashions from “La Mode Illustrée,”
edited by JoAnne Olian;
The Writer's Guide to Everyday Life in Regency and Victorian England from 1811–1901,
by Kristine Hughes; and
Cooking the Austrian Way,
by Ann Knox.