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Lot 49
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Sigmund Freud rare signed Palestine note: spectacular presentation!
Sigmund Freud rare signed Palestine note: spectacular presentation!
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Description:

Freud Sigmund

Sigmund Freud typed signed thank you card, including an autographed note penned by him under his signature measuring 5.75" x 4.75". Signed as "Freud" and dated "May 1936". The note is floated within the mat and is affixed through removable corner tabs. The piece has been matted in a grey mat alongside a fantastic black and white photograph of Freud. Presented in a wood frame with a small brass plaque, to a completed size of 19.75" x 15.75". Note is toned with a few small stains, else near fine. Grey mat with one small corner stain in the lower left corner.

 

The signed card is shown translated in full below:

"MAY 1936

I WISH TO THANK YOU MOST CORDIALLY FOR YOUR PARTICIPATION IN THE CELEBRATION ON THE OCCASION OF MY EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY.

Devotedly yours,

Freud

I had no idea that you currently were in Palestine."

 

Freud's visit to Palestine for his 80th birthday was on the heels of the flight of many of his peers from Europe. His signed autographed card maintains a melancholy tone, the backdrop of which was becoming an escalating and dire situation in Europe. German anti-Semitism was a growing and serious threat, and in response, many intellectual elites from Vienna fled during the 1930s. Psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic pedagogy – vigorously enhanced by Freud – were completely destroyed in their own country of origin. As for the cultural damage suffered by the psychoanalytic-pedagogic movement, (its historic-biographical uprooting), it was not able to recover from this setback for several decades. Most analysts succeeded in fleeing into exile, with many moving to Palestine. In 1933, the 46 year-old Arnold Zweig emigrated to Palestine. Friends had advised him to do so.  Max Eitingon, who was a student and follower of Sigmund Freud, also fled to Palestine and created The Palestine Psychoanalytic Society. The movement of Viennese analysts fleeing into exile reached its sad peak in the years 1937 and 1938. Although Freud would visit there, he did not remain.

 

By February 25, 1934, Freud, referring to his own difficult situation in Vienna, wrote: "You are quite right in your expectation that we intend to stick it out here resignedly. For where should I go in my state of dependence and physical helplessness? And everywhere abroad is so inhospitable. Only if there really were a satrap of Hitler's ruling in Vienna I would no doubt have to go, no matter where."

 

During the phase when he was threatened himself, Freud's greatest concern was the survival of his family and of his analytic colleagues. Freud's letters, including those to Arnold Zweig, were becoming more gloomy. On February 21, 1936, he replied to Zweig: "Your letter moved me very much, It is not the first time that I have heard of the difficulties the cultured man finds in adapting himself to Palestine. History has never given the Jewish people cause to develop their faculty for creating a state or society (…) You feel ill at ease, but I did not know you found isolation so hard to bear. Firmly based in your profession as artist as you are, you ought to be able to be alone for a while. In Palestine at any rate you have personal safety and your human rights. And where would you think of going? You would find America, I would say from all my impressions, far more unbearable. Everywhere else you would be a scarcely tolerated alien. In America you would also have to shed your own language; not an article of clothing, but your own skin. I really think that for the moment you should remain where you are. The prospect of having access to Germany again in a few years really does exist (…) It is true even that after the Nazis, Germany will not be what it was (…) But one will be able to participate in the clearing-up process."

 

The increasingly escalating persecution in Austria led Freud to an increasingly more pessimistic and fatalistic view of the possibility of his remaining in Vienna. And towards the end of the year 1937, his resignation seemed to have prevailed: "In your interest I can scarcely regret that you have not chosen Vienna as your new home. The Government here is different but the people in their worship of anti-Semitism are entirely at one with their brothers in the Reich." His last short letter dated June 4, 1938, still written in Vienna, was addressed to Arnold Zweig: "Leaving today for 39, Elsworthy Road, London N. W. 3. Affect, greetings Freud." Zweig answered him on June 18, 1938: "You are now in safety, no longer exposed to years of vindictive persecution (...) your archives, your books, your collections have been saved."

 

An important signed and autographed note, penned in the middle of chaos!

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