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Salon kontrovers: Letters - Writing and Reading - The Engagement Letters of Sigmund Freud to Martha Bernays

Mon, 21 Sep 2026 · 19:30

Holzhausenschlösschen, Frankfurt, Germany

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Salon kontrovers: Letters - Writing and Reading - The Engagement Letters of Sigmund Freud to Martha Bernays — Holzhausenschlösschen, Frankfurt
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"To have you as you are" - "Our 'novel in installments'" - The engagement 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. She founded the series "Salon kontrovers: Briefe - schreiben und lesen" in 2014 and led it until her death in 2022.

Four years apart, engaged after two months - and all of it conducted mainly through letters. Looking back at 86, Martha Bernays called this period "such a torture". The long-distance love was hard to bear for Sigmund Freud as well. When they first met in 1882 in the Vienna Woods, he was 26 and she was 21.

The letters reveal how jealous, hot-tempered and possessive Freud was - and how prone to addiction (cocaine), torn and vulnerable he already was as a young man. Martha, by contrast, is cautious and measured, arguing with quotations from the classics. The engagement is kept secret; her mother dislikes him, finding that he lacks "the manner of dealing with ladies". Both come from impoverished, large Jewish families whose existence was precarious. What remains is education.

He tries to reshape her - "Be mine as I imagine you" is his initial motto - but through writing she increasingly asserts herself, contributing her own arguments and ideas, including on "the unconscious". He matures alongside her and comes to trust her: "You will become my collaborator in the most serious matters." In the end he accepts: "To have you as you are." Alongside all the gravity, the letters are also full of curses, accusations, ultimatums, apologies, reconciliations and repeated vows of love.

The wedding takes place in 1886 in Wandsbek, where Martha Bernays' family lived. After that, almost no written records from her survive. The five-volume publication of the correspondence, completed in 2025, restores her voice.