Freud's Dream Girl
Sun Herald
Sunday July 20, 2003
Despite poverty, controversy and his fixation with sex, Martha Freud's love for her husband lasted their lifetimes. John Follain profiles the woman who fascinated Freud.
Sigmund Freud was a penniless 25-year-old university researcher when he first saw her. Martha Bernays, five years his junior, was sitting in his family's dining room, a guest of one of his sisters. She was helping to prepare supper, and Freud was bowled over, as he would write, by "this little girl, sitting at the long table, talking so nicely and peeling apples with her little fingers. After that I believed in miracles".
In time, Martha became as precious to Freud as life itself. And yet the woman who shared his life for more than half a century has been neglected by Freud scholars. Just over 50 years after her death, Martha has emerged to claim her due in a biography by Katja Behling-Fischer, a writer from her home town of Hamburg. Behling-Fischer has sifted through family archives and some of the letters she wrote to Freud - most are expected to remain locked away for another five years at least, as they are being edited for publication at a snail-like pace.
The biography depicts Martha as a spirited woman who, like her husband, was ahead of her time. She inspired Freud both intimately and professionally, and their relationship reveals a Freud far removed from the stereotype of the dispassionate trailblazer of psychoanalysis. The book has been welcomed by Anton Freud, one of Martha's grandsons, who says she was much more than "just the wife, or someone who cared for the house and children".
Martha, born in 1861, was the second child of a well-established Orthodox Jewish family. Her grandfather was the leading rabbi of Hamburg and her mother, Emmeline, was very religious. This illustrious background was no guarantee of wealth: when Martha was eight, her father, who sold advertising space in local newspapers and traded in bonds, was arrested and jailed because he failed to pay his creditors. He was freed after 10 months, but only because his family could not survive without him. His employer agreed to hire him again, but on condition he move to Vienna to work in a subsidiary, which he did.
The family's fortunes improved, but when Martha was 18, her father died. For her mother, the priority was to ensure Martha found a husband to fit her religious background and give her a comfortable position in society. Martha was almost 21 when she was invited to the Freud apartment in April 1882. Sigmund, a medical graduate, usually dined alone in his room so he could continue his studies of neurology. But on the evening when the doe-eyed Martha appeared, her hair as usual parted down the middle and tied back clear of her long, pale face and sensual mouth, she made such an impression that he stayed and had dinner with her, his parents and five siblings. For Martha, too, it was love at first sight. And according to a friend, one of the reasons she found him attractive was that he reminded her of her father.
Freud's wooing of Martha was fast but sporadic. They met several times in the weeks that followed, for walks in the Prater amusement park on the city's outskirts. At first they were never alone: Minna, Martha's younger sister, was the escort that propriety imposed on them. Freud sent Martha a bouquet of roses, with a couple of poems he had chosen. And yet he was shy and insecure: when, in late May, during their first walk alone, Martha refused his gift of a bunch of oak leaves, he was sure she didn't want him and agonised over his perceived rejection. Slowly, Martha placated him.
Martha's patience was again tested a week or so later. Freud happened to see her making a money pouch for her cousin, and concluded he had been jilted. Martha forgave him his possessiveness and they exchanged gifts: she baked him a cake, and he gave her a copy of David Copperfield. On June 13, Martha was invited to dinner at the Freud home, and she pressed his hand under the table. That week, she received her first letter from Freud, in which he addressed her by the polite Sie (you) - the more intimate du came later. "Precious Martha, how did you change my life?" he began.
When her mind was made up, Martha was direct. "Sigi, my Sigi," she wrote in an early letter. "Today for the first time I call you by your name... My darling, I am happy, yes, happy as I have never been in my long life." She gave him a ring that had belonged to her father, and he, too poor to afford anything else, made a copy of it and gave that to her. By mid-June, they considered themselves engaged. Freud saw this as a triumph - she had chosen him despite his poverty and his atheism.
They kept their engagement secret, as Martha's mother couldn't accept the son of a Jewish wool merchant with no money, no proper job or footing in society, who was also an atheist. Martha would have none of it, and went on seeing Freud as often as she could. When Emmeline saw how determined her daughter was, she took the drastic step of abandoning Vienna in the summer of 1883, taking her daughters to the town of Wandsbek, outside Hamburg.
Martha poured her passion into letters, two or three a day; Freud responded just as often. She called him "My beloved man" - the German Mann also means "husband".
Freud wrote, "My beloved girl, you are happiness itself for me. Without you I would not have the desire to live. Only for your sake, I would like to conquer part of the world, so that we can enjoy it together." He described how their future home should be furnished, down to the pictures. Then there is a brusque return to reality: "Oh my dear Martha, how poor we are. When people ask us what we have for our life together, we can only say: nothing but our love for each other." Another time he wrote, "Let's marry in poverty, be content with only two rooms and let's eat stale bread. I'm fed up with this situation."
Martha, who spent much of her time doing crocheting and lacework for her future home with Freud, responded, "My beloved sweet Sigi, why can't we be together? I could not sleep half the night... your dear and noble image was before me and my longing for you was so intense... I want to be the way you want me to be. Just love me a little, a little passionately. You kiss so wonderfully. Cover me with love..."
Freud's letters were not always romantic. His obsessive jealousy surfaced repeatedly. He warned Martha against making friends with artists, as they needed only to write a song to unlock a woman's heart. He had only science, and microscopes can't woo women. When Martha told him of a skating rink she wanted to try, at first he ordered her to stay away - if she slipped and fell, a man might touch her. Then he wrote to say she could go, but only if she didn't do so with a man holding her.
The letters show Martha was deeply involved in Freud's emotional and professional development. And he was not beyond using her as a guinea pig, as in the case of his experiments with a little-known substance - cocaine. He sent her some doses and instructions after having discovered it made him feel enthusiastic and brave. He wrote that the cocaine would give colour to her cheeks - he had long complained that she was too pale. Martha replied that she didn't need the cocaine, but she had tried it, and it had indeed felt pleasant.
Freud guessed it might be a useful anaesthetic. He wrote a scientific paper on cocaine, but was in such a hurry to visit Martha that he didn't pursue tests on its anaesthetic properties. A colleague did, however, and discovered it was the only drug that could be used for eye operations. The doctor won fame and wealth. Later, Freud gallantly observed that the years he enjoyed with Martha were worth much more to him than this missed success. It could be claimed that, were it not for Martha, Freud might have continued in the medical branch and never gone into psychoanalysis. What is known is that neither of them became addicts, although for much of the 1890s, Freud consumed a little cocaine before important meetings.
Over the three years they were separated, Freud visited Martha a dozen times, travelling third-class by train. He stayed for several weeks when he could afford to, a lodger at a cheap hotel. The visits did little to alleviate the tension, and he suggested that she join him in Vienna.
But in the end, it was Freud who made a big sacrifice. He decided to abandon his university career so that he could open a neurologist's office and marry Martha. He opened his first private office on Easter Monday, 1886, and they married in September. It was a small affair. Freud agreed to a Jewish wedding, but throughout the marriage, religion was banned from the house.
Martha had six children in the first eight years of their marriage. One early biographer, who knew the family, reported that the only conflict between Freud and Martha in more than 50 years of marriage was about mushrooms - whether they should be cooked with their stalks or without. It sounds a promising field of research for psychoanalysts - could there be a parallel with castration?
Freud never did analyse his sexual relationship with his wife. He was as open about his patients' intimate affairs as he was tight-lipped about his own. One exception is a reference he makes to a dream that, he says, could have been prompted by the good sex he had "last Wednesday morning".
Martha once confided that she found her husband's work - discovering the causes of, and treating, neurotic and psychopathic states and interpreting dreams - bizarre. She even described it as "pornography". Yet she basked in his reflected glory, starting with her own promotion from "Frau Doktor" to "Frau Professor". She delighted in visits to their home at Berggasse 19 by guests such as Thomas Mann, the author of Death In Venice, and Princess Marie Bonaparte, a great-granddaughter of Napoleon's brother Lucien.
The birth of the Freuds' last child, Anna, in 1895 coincided with an event that is rumoured to have cast a cloud over their marriage. Martha's sister, Minna, moved in with the Freuds, and her closeness to Sigmund led to gossip that they had an affair.
Minna, more androgynous and less attractive than Martha, was more intellectually minded. She was interested in Freud's work, and Martha was relieved to have someone else discuss what she saw as immoral subjects with him. Behling-Fischer thinks it likely that Freud and Minna had a deep but platonic relationship, especially as his professional reputation would have been wrecked if word of such an affair had leaked out.
One day in April 1923, Martha learnt that her husband was in hospital. Freud had found a growth in his mouth, which was diagnosed as cancer, and had gone to hospital for an operation - without telling his family. She found him much weakened after losing a lot of blood. It was the beginning of palatine cancer, and from then Martha and their youngest daughter, Anna, nursed Freud, as his mouth had to be disinfected every day.
Freud continued with his work, but he had to curtail his travelling. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Martha worried about the fate of their two sons who lived in Berlin, like several of their friends and colleagues. She and her husband thought they were safe in Vienna - his books were burnt by Hitler's thugs, but that was far away in Berlin. The situation changed when Hitler annexed Austria in 1938. When a group of Nazis burst into her home, Martha showed great calm. Politely, she asked them to leave their guns in the umbrella stand. When they asked for money, she told them to help themselves, in the same tone as if she had been offering more coffee to a guest.
With Minna, the Freuds sought refuge in London. According to friends, the 77-year-old Martha adapted easily to their new surroundings. She visited the parks, marvelled at the shops, and wrote to her niece that she felt like a farmer who sees the big city for the first time. As in Vienna, she enjoyed her husband's fame. Taxi drivers drove the curious past their Hampstead home, and in the year of their arrival they had a visit from Salvador Dali, whom they found rather bizarre. Virginia Woolf also dropped in for tea (she later described Freud as a wizened old man with the bright eyes of a monkey), and Martha was particularly proud that Princess Eugenie Bonaparte, the daughter of Princess Marie, spent more time at her home than at Buckingham Palace.
But an inoperable recurrence of Freud's cancer weighed heavily on Martha, and in September 1939, after one of his dogs turned away from him because of the smell from his mouth, he decided to end his life. He asked his doctor to help him. Martha, Anna and other family members gathered around Freud after he was given a heavy morphine injection. He died on the morning of September 23, 1939.
In letters to friends, Martha said what mattered was that Freud had "been himself" until the end and not been mentally incapacitated. She was glad she had enjoyed a lifetime with him, and had been able to do much for him. It is likely she meant the sacrifices she made in raising their children, managing the house, and ensuring that he was free to pursue his professional tasks. And all this despite the fact that she despaired of his research into sex.
Martha struggled through World War II, not daring to undress at night for fear of the bombing raids on London. After the war, she and Anna managed Freud's legacy, helping his first biographers and drawing the family tree. Shortly before she died, she shouted repeatedly, "Sophie! Sophie!" - she may have been calling her nurse, or perhaps her favourite daughter, who died of flu at the age of 27 when she was pregnant. Martha died in her sleep on November 2, 1951, aged 90. Like Freud, she was cremated. Her ashes were placed in the same urn as his at Golders Green Crematorium. Anna arranged for a rabbi to lead the funeral. She thought that was what Martha would have wanted.
Martha Freud: Die Frau Des Genies by Katja Behling-Fischer is published in Germany by Aufbau Taschenbuch Verlag. This article was first published in The Sunday Times Magazine (UK).
© 2003 Sun Herald