Salon kontrovers: Briefe – schreiben und lesen - ergänzen
"Dich so zu haben, wie Du bist" – "Unser `Roman in Fortsetzung`" – The bridal letters of Sigmund Freud to Martha Bernays
Read by Stephan Wolf-Schönburg and Anna Kubin
Selection, introduction and moderation: Ruthard Stäblein
The event is held in memory of Hanne Kulessa, who would have turned 75 this year. In 2014, she initiated the series "Salon kontrovers: Briefe – schreiben und lesen" and led it until her death in 2022.
They have been separated for four years and yet engaged after just two months. They get to know each other not face to face, but mainly through letters. Martha Bernays describes this time, looking back as an 86-year-old, as a "torture": "such a torture." This love at a distance was hard to endure for Sigmund Freud as well. When they first met in the Vienna Woods in 1882, he was 26, and she was 21 years old.
And yet, it sparked with a kind of love lightning. For us today, it can be enlightening to see how this retarding love storm with its distant rumble coincides with the birth of psychoanalysis and the birth of their six children.
He is jealous, easily angry, quick-tempered, possessive. The letters also convey how addiction-prone (cocaine), torn, and vulnerable Freud already was as a young man.
She is hesitant, weighing her words, arguing with quotes from classics, loving, understanding—everything one would expect from a young, educated woman of that time. The engagement is kept secret. Her mother does not like him. He lacks the "form" to deal with ladies.
Both come from impoverished, large, and existentially threatened Jewish families. She can prove a scholarly chief rabbi in her ancestry. His father was a wool dealer in Moravia, moved to Vienna, but could hardly feed his eight children. One of them died after eight months. What remains is education.
He tries to re-educate her — "Be mine, as I think it" is his initial motto — but she increasingly manages to assert herself in the writing of the letters, introducing her own arguments and ideas, e.g., about the "unconscious," which she brings from her reading treasure. He matures with her and trusts: "You will become a collaborator in the most serious matters." He finally accepts: "Dich so zu haben, wie Du bist."
But it's not only serious discussions in these letters; they are filled with curses, accusations, ultimatums, apologies, reconciliations, and repeated declarations of love. Indeed, love storms.
The marriage takes place in 1886 in Wandsbek, where Martha Bernays's family lived. She is pushed back into the traditional female role and accepts it. She takes care of the children, him, and the family. Her sister is also included in the household and lives with them. But he is also concerned about his family, writing understanding letters primarily to the eldest daughter, Anna.
Only too few written testimonies from Martha Bernays exist after the wedding. With the five-volume (!) publication of the correspondence, completed in 2025, she can finally emerge and be heard in her dialogue with her fiancé in the "Salon kontrovers" in the Frankfurt Holzhausen Castle.
Hallo, ich bin Maya.
