Anna with Gestapo

Anna Freud, a key figure in the development of psychoanalytic child psychology, was born 120 years ago today. It seems unlikely that she never kept a diary, but her papers remain under the control of the Freud archive and, to date, there has been no published evidence of any journals or diaries. Her famous father wasn’t much of a diary keeper either, but, in the latter years of his life, he kept a ‘chronicle’ consisting of no more than a single phrase for most days. This has been published in a large book - as The Diary of Sigmund Freud - with half-page explanations for every phrase! According to the editors, Anna’s name ‘absolutely dominates’ the record - with entries such as ‘Anna with Gestapo’.

Anna Freud was born in Vienna on 3 December 1895 to Sigmund Freud and Martha Bernays, the youngest of six children. She is said to have been competitive with her siblings, and to have been naughty, learning more at home than at school. From 1915, she worked as a teacher in her old school, the Cottage Lyceum, remaining there until 1920. She left, apparently, due to illness. By this time, she was already undergoing analysis by her father.

Having had the chance to observe children on a daily basis while teaching, Anna Freud was drawn to child psychology, and began her own psychoanalytical practice. From 1927 until 1934, she was General Secretary of the International Psychoanalytical Association, originally started by her father, where she presented papers outlining her approach to child psychoanalysis. Having taught at the Vienna Psychoanalytical Training Institute for some years, she became its director in 1935. The following year, she published The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence, a founding work of ego psychology, establishing her reputation as a pioneering theoretician.

In 1938, the Freuds fled from Austria in response to Nazi harassment of Jews - indeed Anna had been arrested by the Gestapo. They immigrated to London, to a house in Maresfield Gardens, Hampstead, (not a 100 metres, in fact, from where I spent my early childhood in the 1950s). Sigmund Freud died a year later, but Anna continued to live in the same house (now a museum) for the rest of her life. Anna’s teaching in London led to a conflict between her and Melanie Klein - who had evolved her own theory and technique for child analysis - which threatened to split the British Psychoanalytical Society. A series of war-time ‘Controversial Discussions’ ended with the formation of parallel training courses for the two groups.

During the war, Anna set up the Hampstead War Nursery to provide foster care for over 80 children of single-parent families. Together with her lifelong friend Dorothy Burlingham, she published studies of children under stress in Young Children in War-Time and Infants without Families. By 1947, Freud and Kate Friedlaender had established the Hampstead Child Therapy Courses, training English and US child therapists, and a children’s clinic was added a few years later. From the 1950s, Freud travelled regularly to the US to lecture and teach. At Yale Law School, for example, she taught seminars on crime and the family, leading to publication of Beyond the Best Interests of the Child (1973) with Joseph Goldstein and Albert Solnit.

The publication of her collected works was begun in 1968, but the last of the eight volumes did not appear until 1983, a year after her death. The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis put out a memorial issue, and the clinic was renamed the Anna Freud Centre. Further information is available from The Freud Museum, Wikipedia, the BBC, Psychology’s Feminist Voices or The Philosophers’ Mail.

If Anna Freud kept a diary at any point in her life, there’s been no sign of it being published or being used for biographical purposes. The only diaries kept by Anna held in the Freud Museum archives are appointment diaries. The so-called Freud Archive, held by the US Library of Congress, has a significant number of documents which remain sealed for years to come - see an article by Joseph L. Sax in RBM. But, whether any of these are Anna’s or not is hard to tell. A review of the fictional Hysterical: Anna Freud’s Story by Rebecca Coffey states, ‘Anna’s papers and diaries remain under the control of the Freud Archives’.

In the absence of any diaries left by Anna, I turned to her father. But he wasn’t much of a diary writer either. Ilse Grubrich-Simitis, in her book Back to Freud's Texts: Making Silent Documents Speak (Yale University Press, 1996, see Googlebooks) refers to his ‘diary like personal jottings’ and specifies: ‘the slim “Geheim-Chronik” [secret chronicle] kept jointly with his fiancée from 1883 to 1886; the “Resiejournal” [travel diary], also comprising only a few pages, on the beginning of the voyage to America in 1909 with Ferenczi and Jung; the entries in “Prochaskas Familien-Kalender”; the “Kürzeste Chronik”.’

This latter, the “Kürzeste Chronik” or “Shortest Chronicle”, was published in English by the Hogarth Press in 1992 as The Diary of Sigmund Freud 1929-1939: A Record of the Final Decade (translated and annotated by Michael Molnar). The book is large and thick, and lavishly illustrated with many black and white photographs, but the actual diary entries by Freud are so short - a few words - that they are even included verbatim within the index (as well as at least three times elsewhere)! The bulk of the book, however, is taken up with extensive annotations of each diary entry - explanations, embellishments and analysis of Freud’s daily life.

Molnar explains in his introduction that, in 1986, the papers stored all over the house were assigned to an archive, and how, at that point, Freud’s diary was handed over to him. He goes on to say: ‘It is worth noting how frequently various names are mentioned in the diary. Not surprisingly, it is Anna’s name which absolutely dominates the record, for it was during these years of sickness that she became Freud’s constant companion, his faithful “Anna-Antigone”.’ Here are some, but not all, of Sigmund Freud’s laconic diary entries mentioning his daughter.

3 December 1929
‘Anna’s birthday 34 yrs’

17 December 1929
‘Anna to Essen - cut stones bought’

21 December 1929
‘Anna back’

26 March 1930
‘Anna to Bpest. Elkuss +’

27 March 1930
‘Anna back - Eitington from Paris’

15 April 1930
‘Anna & Dorothy to Paris’

17 April 1930
‘Anna & Dorothy back’

14 September 1930
‘Anna at Mother’s burial’

22 February 1932
‘Anna and I have infectious cold’

3 December 1933
‘Anna 38 yr’

23 January 1935
‘Anna’s lecture’

11 June 1937
‘Anna’s accident’

22 March 1938
‘Anna with Gestapo’

20 May 1939
‘Anna to Amsterdam’

The Archduke’s travels

The Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated a century ago today by Serbian extremists. It was one of the most infamous acts in history since it led directly to the start of the First World War. What is much less well known, however, is that some years earlier the Archduke had undertaken a 10 month-long journey round the world, and kept a fascinating - if sometimes verbose - diary of his travels, expressing delight, for example, at seeing flying fish at sea, or moaning about uncomfortable London cabs in Sydney.

Franz Ferdinand was born in Graz, Austria, in 1863, the oldest son of Archduke Karl Ludwig, the younger brother of Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph. He was given the title Archduke of Austria-Este from birth. He began his military career at 12 years of age, rising quickly through the ranks, to be appointed a major general aged 31. Later, as heir-presumptive to the elderly emperor, he was inspector general of all Austria-Hungary’s armed forces.

In 1889, Crown Prince Rudolf (Emperor Franz Joseph’s son, and cousin to Franz Ferdinand) committed suicide, leaving Ludwig in line to inherit the throne. Ludwig immediately renounced the throne in favour of his son, Franz Ferdinand, and died soon after. Franz Ferdinand, however, had fallen in love with a woman, Countess Sophie Chotek, who was not considered eligible to marry a member of the Imperial House of Habsburg. After much negotiation and petitioning, the marriage, which took place in 1900, was allowed, but only under certain conditions: their descendants (they had three children) would have no succession rights to the throne; nor would Sophie share her husband’s rank, title, or privileges.

In this period of European history, Austria-Hungary was an empire full of tensions not only between the regions and their Hapsburg rulers, but between various ethnic groups at odds over religion and politics. Franz Ferdinand is known to have worried about these tensions, and the prospect of the empire disintegrating, and to have considered ideas for allowing the regions more say in government, and more autonomy. But he was not much liked by the people - his public persona is said to have been cold, sharped-tongued and short-tempered - and his political plans were no more popular among the ruling elites.

According to Wikipedia’s biography, Franz Ferdinand advocated a careful approach towards Serbia - repeatedly opposing hardliners in Vienna - warning that harsh treatment of the Serbs would bring Austria-Hungary into open conflict with Russia, to the ruin of both Empires. On Sunday, 28 June 1914, on a visit to Sarajevo, the capital of the Austro-Hungarian province of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Franz Ferdinand and Sophie were shot dead by Gavrilo Princip, one of a group of Serbian assassins. Another of the group had tried, earlier in the day, to bomb the Archduke’s motorcade, but that assassination attempt had failed. The group had been coordinated by Danilo Ilić, a Bosnian Serb, whose political objective was to break off Austria-Hungary’s south-Slav provinces so they could be combined into a Yugoslavia.

The assassination gave the Vienna hardliners an opportunity to move against Serbia and its fight for independence: Austria-Hungary demanded impossible reparations, and, failing to receive them, declared war on Serbia. The complex web of alliances in Europe, then, was activated as Russia declared war on Austria-Hungary, Germany declared war on Russia, and France and Britain declared war on Germany and Austria-Hungary. Thus did begin - on 28 July 1914 - World War I.

More information on the Archduke can be found at Wikipedia, and Bio. Wikipedia has a long entry about the assassination itself, and First World War has video footage of the Archduke arriving at the town hall in Sarajevo. See also media articles today: The Guardian, Washington Post, The Telegraph, BBC.

In late 1892 and 1893, Franz Ferdinand traveled around the world, partly, it is recorded, for medical reasons: the journey served both as a cover and as a means to recover. Science was the journey’s official purpose and Franz Ferdinand traveled under the alias of Count of Hohenberg on the torpedo ram cruiser Kaiserin Elisabeth. He was accompanied by over 400 people, ranging from a navy chaplain to a royal treasurer. Throughout the ten months of the journey, he kept a daily diary - often in considerable detail - and wrote more than 2,000 pages. The diary was published in two volumes in 1896 as Tagebuch Meiner Reise Um Die Erde, 1892-1893. It was reprinted in 2012 (copies available through Amazon, for example). The original 19th century volumes, though, can also be bought on Abebooks, at a price.

Franz Ferdinand’s diary was never translated into English. However, in 2013, Der Spiegel ran an informative article on the newly reprinted two volumes, and an English version of the article is available online. Much information about the Antipodean part of the Archduke’s journey and diary is also available thanks to Weekend Australian Magazine. In Vienna, the Welt Museum is celebrating the centenary of Franz Ferdinand’s death with a major exhibition on the Archduke’s journey based on his diaries.

Most significantly, the full text of Franz Ferdinand’s diary is being made freely available online and in English thanks to an unknown translator and editor (although he/she does provide an email address for contact). The editor states: ‘I invite you, Dear Reader, to follow Franz Ferdinand’s world tour of 1893, day by day, in a new translation into English. This is a work in progress and help is welcome.’

The Franz Ferdinand’s World Tour website is simple and easy to use, with information on the people who accompanied the Archduke, the ship he travelled in, and a chronological list of days with the date, the place, and a link to the diary’s entry for that day.

In the Archduke’s own preface to the 1896 publication, he wrote: ‘To collect all the thousands of impressions that assailed me and to remember in old age what I cherished as a young man, I wrote daily notes from its beginning of the voyage on. In this, I was also thinking about those who had remained at home. They who could not experience directly the incomparable allures were - if only in weak form - to find a means to participate indirectly in this journey across the world by my offer of my recollections. Thus, I offer my beloved ones and my friends my diary. It contains sights, experiences, thoughts, lessons and hopes to find a level of interest among those for whom it is intended to the extent that it induces affection and friendship.’

Here are a few extracts, the first a shorter entry characteristic of those made at sea, and the second, a longer entry from Franz Ferdinand’s first day in Sydney, which is more typical of the lengthy notes he made when visiting places on land.

3 April 1893
‘The sky was very cloudy and a rainsquall was pouring down in heavy drops, drumming against the deck but quickly evaporate in the heat. Church service was therefore held in the battery.

Still during the morning appeared the Sayer islands, Salang island off the Panga peninsula, in the afternoon the Brothers islands became visible. All these small islands seem to be of volcanic origin, viewed through a spyglass, and thickly covered with tropical vegetation.

During the day we observed tide rips or stream currents that are very common in the Strait of Malacca; these are wave movements that are caused by counter-currents that move in stripes across the otherwise quiet sea and make the steering much more difficult as they cause the ship to drift from its course. I might compare these currents to a quickly flowing watercourse in a sea that flings out foaming, dancing waves at the surface.

An outstanding number of flying fishes, large schools of dolphins as well as fish similar to tuna were mingling. The latter ones pursued, jumping out of the water, smaller fish while these in turn were followed by large birds similar to common dabs that I could not determine more precisely.

The evening was tepid and mild, so that I whiled away an hour on the bridge before I went to sleep, fanned by the the cool evening air, lost in the view of the southern starry sky which I consider by the way inferior in diversity, beauty and splendor of the zodiacs to the northern sky.’

16 May 1893
‘The youngest continent would not receive the sons of the old world in bad weather. As I arrived on deck at half past 6 o’clock, I found the sky clear and serene. The sun was just rising. The sea had calmed down to some degree. Various seagulls and sea swallows as well as large guillemots or penguins were swarming around our ship which was approaching the entrance to Sydney, Port Jackson. The day was gorgeous but the temperature was so low that we were well advised to wear warm coats. From afar we could see the two white shining capes or peninsulas - Outer North and South Head - through which the approach to the harbor leads. These peninsulas descend steeply into the sea with sharp rocky faces and cliffs. Splashing, the waves break against the shore. Hundreds of crag martins and common swifts were tweeting and circling above their nesting places. On Outer South Head is a light house. The entrance is rich in flashy direction obelisks. On a small steamboat the pilot was approaching toward us to take the position of our our old captain from Port Kennedy.

All the harbors that I have yet seen are surpassed in the beauty of its scenery by Sydney - a view shared also by the other gentlemen who saw it for the first time.

Despite many enthusiastic descriptions of Port Jackson we have received, the scenery that opened up before our eyes still surprised us and our astonishment and admiration grew minute by minute.

Having passed through the outlying mountains the ship enters into a narrow channel turns hard towards Southwest - and now there lies a delightful sound in front of us. In the distance the sea of houses of Sydney are glittering, to the right and left small bays are open, surrounded by green hills covered with trees and countless villas and country homes whose gardens were filled with splendid flowers in the calendar autumnal colors. Overall it creates an extremely lively and serene view. The bays are populated with steam boats, yachts and boats of all kinds whose passengers wave greetings to the entering “Elisabeth”. Truly, Australia could not have offered us a more welcoming reception! We saw this as a good sign for our stay which we were looking forward to in a very good mood.

The fine clear cool air that refreshed us contributed in no small part to the great first impression - doubly welcome after the sweltering humid heat of Java that flags both mind and body.

Our joyful mood was even more increased by the German consul general Pelldram, who also represented Austria-Hungary here at the moment and had come to greet us and handed us three messages at the same time.

The whole force of the sanitary police regulations which is applied especially against ships coming from Batavia we had to endure too. First we had to anchor in Watson Bay for the health assessment - a stay we did not have to regret due to the delightful surrounding landscape.

After we had been given permission to proceed, “Elisabeth” continued the journey alongside the picturesque bay shore whose ledges were crowned by small forts and batteries - which seemed to me of subordinate fortification value. We then passed Garden Island with its arsenal and the navy yard of the Australian war fleet as well as Woolloomooloo Bay and then moored at a buoy amidst the warships of the Australian squadron at Farm Cove between Lady Macquarie’s Chair and Fort Macquarie.

The coastal defense is undertaken by the ships of the British navy stationed in Australian waters, the Australian Auxiliary Squadron and of warships in the service of the colony. According to the Australasian Naval Force Act of 1887 the Australian colonies pay an annual contribution of 1,092,000 fl. in Austrian currency to the British government for it to provide the Australian Auxiliary Squadron. Furthermore the construction costs borne by the British government for the ships of this squadron carries an interest of 5 percent paid by the colonies but the overall annual interest is not allowed to surpass 420.000 fl. in Austrian currency. This Auxiliary Squadron consists of 5 fast cruisers and 2 torpedo cannon boats and is commanded by a British Rear Admiral who also is in command of the squadron of the ships of the British navy stationed in Australian waters. This squadron consists of 1 armored ship, 3 cruisers, 3 cannon boats and 1 steam yacht; its main station is Sydney. The war fleet owned by the Australian colonies consists in total of 1 armored ship, 2 cruisers, 4 cannon boats, 13 torpedo boats, 2 torpedo barges and 7 steam boats; the majority of theses ships belongs to Victoria and Queensland, while New Zealand does not own any warship.

Next to us was moored the proud British ship of the admiral, the armored cruiser “Orlando“, with 5600 t; next to it followed the cruiser “Royalist” and the cruiser “Mildura” of the Australian Auxiliary Squadron besides the cannon boat “Boomerang” and the cannon boat “Paluma” owned by the colony of Queensland which is used at shared cost by the colony and the British government to map the coast. On these ships our anthem rang out accompanied by the sound of the guns.

In a short time appeared Lieutenant Governor Sir F. M. Darley, accompanied by his adjutant and cabinet secretary, and soon afterward the commander of the royal squadron, Rear Admiral Bowden-Smith, as well as the mayor of Sydney, Mr. Manning, came on board to greet me. The governor himself had been recalled to England after only two years of service. His successor is bound to arrive soon. Numerous compatriots namely Istrians and Dalmatians who are doing business in Sydney came on board of “Elisabeth” to look for and find friends and acquaintances.

Dispositions for the next few days were quickly made. Then a boat brought me on land to set foot on the soil of the colony of New South Wales and visit its capital, the oldest city of Australia.

Sydney, which lies on the South coast of Jackson Bay that cuts deeply into the land, is situated on a couple of hills - imposing by the number and size of its buildings - and then by and by blends into villa settlements and the green of the landscape. Founded in 1788 as the seat of the penal colony of New South Wales, Sydney - originally Port Jackson, then named in honor of the secretary of state Viscount Sydney - has grown tremendously namely during the last few years. The population increase of Sydney is best illustrated by the following numbers: In 1800 Sydney had barely 2600 inhabitants, in 1861 95.596, in 1881 already 237.300, on 31 December 1892 including the suburbs already 411.710 inhabitants.

As an important trading and industrial center Sydney owes its rise mostly to the safety and size of its harbor which handles more than three quarters of the total imports and more than half the exports of the colony of New South Wales. In the year 1892 2960 ships with 2,804.549 t entered here and 3067 ships with 2,842.635 t departed; the imports of the colony represented in this year a total value of 249,318.312 fl. in Austrian currency, the exports one of 263,666.964 fl. in Austrian currency.

The boat landed below Government House at Fort Macquarie where the road led along a quay to the city. On this quay there was a very busy life as the large steamers of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company as well as those of the Messageries maritimes are moored and are next to the warehouses of many floors in which wool bales and hides were loaded in and out without interruption. Viewed from the quay the two main streets and main traffic veins of Sydney, George Street und Pitt Street, cross the center of the city running parallel from North to South. Even though many streets are arranged in a grid, this monotonous regularity of modern city design is not much noticed as Sydney is situated on hills which continuously changes the scenery of the streets.

Among the many public buildings of Sydney all built in stone I mention the most remarkable: the university, a colossal building with a grandiose hall in Gothic style which rises at the North end of the beautiful Victoria Park, the cathedral and the newly built Catholic Church of Maria, the splendid Town Hall, the palatial post office with its colonnades and a large tower, the museum next to Hyde Park and finally the parliament.

Pretty houses, many with balconies and verandas, and shops on the ground floor where European goods are sold, line the macadamized streets where a busy crowd is going here and there. The streets are highly urban and still very cozy and friendly. Not the least because the visitor thinks to be in a European city as he sees but white faces, among them especially beautiful women and girls - an agreeable view after the colored and in our opinion not very attractive physiognomy of the natives of the countries we had recently visited.

The streets are very busy which is easy to understand in the case of Sydney as an important trading place. The only thing I find fault with is that they have introduced London cabs that are very uncomfortable for its passengers.

The acquisitions we had to do were fully made in the European manner. The transactions went smoothly and quickly and we appreciated not having to search and haggle for hours as in Bombay, Calcutta, Singapore and Batavia.

Then I paid a visit to the Lieutenant Governor in Government House built in Tudor style and distinguished in its interior by its noble calm elegance of its furnishings. Sir F. M. Darley speaks German fairly well which eased the conversation very much. He showed me the garden of the palace which offers a delicious view of the harbor and Mossmans Bay opposite it with its villa quater of St. Leonard. The garden is well kept and contains a rich collection of Australian tree and bush species.

The next visit was devoted to - I suffer from museum addiction - the museum housed in an imposing building and distinguished by the richness, correct arrangement and good conservation of its objects. As I was first interested in the especially Australian species, I turned towards the mammals to study namely the strange class of marsupials. Among the well stuffed animals were represented various kangaroo and wallaby species, from the giant kangaroo to the lovely rock wallaby (Petrogale penicillata), oppossums, the flying squirrels, various species of quoll and possums, the Australian koala, wombat, dugong, the wild dog dingo or warragal and the platypus.

The bird world of Australia is completely represented. Noteworthy are: the New Dutch cassowary or emu; the rare lyrebird; the numerous species of intensely colored cockatoo and parrots, as well as the group of swamp and water fowl which included many species of which I was unaware. Australia seems to be poor in predator birds and chicken species according to the survey presented in the museum while the order of the pigeons has beautiful specimens. One well stuffed specimen of every bird species is presented in a glass cabinet. Thousands of bird bodies, however, are kept in chests to serve as exchange objects from time to time.

The museum possesses too a rich collection of corals and shells, of beetles and butterflies and finally an ethnographic one of objects from the continent and the islands of Australia which I intended to see during a second visit.

In the mean time, the clock struck five, a time where the streets of Sydney are filled with the vivid traffic as the inhabitants of this city tend to go out into the open air at that time.

Following this example we ambled in Hyde Park and in George Street until it was time for the table d’hôte at the Australian Hotel which I intended to attend.

This giant building six floors high resembles in construction, dimensions and installations the English and American hotels but with the agreeably appreciated difference that one did not have to rely only upon English cooking of roast beef and anodyne vegetables but was well supplied with food and drink. The table d’hôte reunited in a large hall a large company. The gentlemen were, according to English custom, wearing dress coats, the ladies even in mostly low-cut festive dresses. Not much laudable can be said about the dinner music performed by some artists who elicited awful sounds out of their instruments.

As the operetta theater that it was said offered good performances was closed and a circus had just left Sydney the day before, there were only two entertainment locations for us who had been deprived of “artistic” divertissement for a long time - the two music halls “Tivoli” and “Alhambra” in which popular singers, among them also Negroes, and female dancers produced themselves in front of the audience that applauded in the manner of the land by shrill whistling and was not particularly distinguished. The audience consisted mostly of workers, sailors and small business men.’

23 August 1893
‘In the morning I again tried my luck to do some shopping in Yokohama and in fact this time guided by the kind Baron Siebold who was completely familiar with Japan and all its aspects thanks to his stay of many years here and also speaking the Japanese language. Unfortunately my efforts were unsuccessful as I tried in vain to find silk and brocade like I bought in Kyoto. I everywhere received the answer that the cloth would have to be ordered first from Kyoto. In contrast I managed to enlarge the board menagerie with lovely white bantams - a full aviary - and enlarge it with one of the already rare cock with their tails of multiple meters in length. I also sent two very cute bears on board that soon became the darlings of the crew and learned in the shortest time to wait in place. Hopefully they arrive at our home healthy as they are intended to be the grace and live in the castle moat at Konopiste.

In the afternoon I wanted to be back in Tokyo and, to evade the lurking eyes of the police, sent Clam and Pronay directly to the capital where they too were festively received by a crowd of over a thousand people and a corresponding contingent of policemen, while I with Siebold exited at the next to last stop and entered Tokyo in rickshaws. The maneuver succeded too so that we could spend a few hours fully unrestricted and eat a dinner in a restaurant of the beautiful Ueno park.’

I am entirely alone

‘When I say something it immediately and finally loses its importance, when I write it down it loses it too, but sometimes gains a new one.’ So wrote Franz Kafka in his diary, exactly 100 years ago - on his 30th birthday. His diaries, which were saved for posterity, thanks to his friend, Max Brod, provide far more insight into Kafka’s intense, often depressing and guilt-laden mental world, than they do more directly into his literary works. One entry ends with ‘saw only solution in jumping out of the window’, and another with ‘I am entirely alone’.

Kafka was born on 3 July 1883 into a Jewish German-speaking family in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. He had two brothers, both of whom died very young, and three sisters. He grew up fearing his father to the point of stuttering in his presence, but, nevertheless, continued to live at home for much of his adult life. He trained as a lawyer at the University of Prague and then was employed by the Worker’s Accident Insurance Institute, a job which he hated. Suffering from insomnia, he began writing at night. He was chronically ill with different complaints, including tuberculosis (diagnosed in 1917) which eventually killed him.

In 1902 Kafka met Max Brod and they would remain friends throughout Kafka’s life. He was engaged twice, to Felice Bauer and Julie Wohryzek, and, in the early 1920s, he fell in love with a married Czech writer Milena Jesenská Pollak. In the last year of his life, he met Dora Diamant, a Zionist and moved to Berlin to live with her. However, he returned to Prague, and then died in 1924, aged but 40, at a sanatorium near Vienna. Further biographical information is available from Wikipedia, The Kafka Project, or Kafka Online.

Though he was reluctant to publish his writing, and indeed published very little in his lifetime, Kafka is a giant in the literature world. His reputation stems largely from very few extraordinary novels - Der Process (The Trial), Das Schloss (The Castle), Amerika - which Brod published soon after his friend’s death. Kafka had left instructions for Brod to destroy all his written works, but Brod chose to ignore the request. Also among Kafka’s writings was a hoard of diaries. These were not translated and published in English until 1948-1949, when Secker & Warburg brought out two volumes (The Diaries of Franz Kafka 1910-1913, The Diaries of Franz Kafka 1914-1923) as translated by Joseph Kresh and Martin Greenberg. A one volume edition was published in 1964 by Peregrine Books.

Some information about Kafka’s diaries can be found at Wikipedia and the full texts in German can be read at The Kafka Project and at University of Vienna web pages created by Werner Haas. A few extracts in English can be read at the Word and Silence website. Here are a few extracts taken from the first published translation of the diaries. (Brod, too, kept a diary, and these have been the subject of some mystery - see The Diary Review article, Brod’s diaries in Kafkaesque story.)  [Addendum Nov 2023: see also Times of Israel article on a new unexpurgated version of Kafka's diaries.]

2 July 1913
‘Wept over the report of the trial of a twenty-three-year-old Marie Abraham who, because of poverty and hunger, strangled her not quite nine-month-old child, Barbara, with a man’s tie that she used as a garter. Very routine story.

The fire with which, in the bathroom, I described to my sister a funny motion picture. Why can I never do that in the presence of strangers?

I would never have married a girl with whom I had lived in the same city for a year.’

3 July 1913
‘The broadening and heightening of existence through marriage. Sermon text. But I almost sense it.

When I say something it immediately and finally loses its importance, when I write it down it loses it too, but sometimes gains a new one.

A band of little golden beads around a tanned throat.’

21 July 1913
‘Don’t despair, not even over the fact that you don’t despair. Just when everything seems over with, new forces come marching up, and precisely that means that you are alive. And if they don’t then everything is over with here, once and for all.

I cannot sleep. Only dreams, no sleep. Today, in my dream, I invented a new kind of vehicle for a park slope. You take a branch, it needn’t be very strong, prop it up on the ground at a slight angle, hold one end in your hand, sit down on it side-saddle, then the whole branch naturally rushes down the slope, since you are sitting on the bough you are carried along at full speed, rocking comfortably on the elastic wood. It is also possible to use the branch to ride up again. The chief advantage aside from the simplicity of the whole device, lies in the fact the branch, thin and flexible as it is, can be lowered or raised as necessary and gets through anywhere, even where a person by himself would get through only with difficulty.

To be pulled in through the ground-floor window of a house by a rope tied around one’s neck and to be yanked up, bloody and ragged, through all the ceilings, furniture, walls, and attics, without consideration, as if by a person who is paying no attention, until the empty noose, dropping the last fragments of me when it breaks through the roof tiles, is seen on the roof.’

13 August 1913
‘Perhaps everything is now ended and the letter I wrote yesterday was the last one. That would certainly be the best. What I shall suffer, what she will suffer - that cannot be compared with the common suffering that would result. I shall gradually pull myself together, she will marry, that is the only way out among the living. We cannot beat a path into the rock for the two of us, it is enough that we wept and tortured ourselves for a year. She will realize this from my last letters. If not, then I will certainly marry her, for I am too weak to resist her opinion about our common fortune and am unable not to carry out, as far as I can, something she considers possible.’

14 August 1913
‘The opposite has happened. There were three letters. The last letter I could not resist. I love her as far as I am capable of it, but the love lies buried to the point of suffocation under fear and self-reproaches.

Conclusion for my case from ‘The Judgement’. I am indirectly in her debt for the story. But Georg goes to pieces because of his fiancée.

Coitus as punishment for the happiness of being together. Live as ascetically as possible, more ascetically than a bachelor, that is the only possible way for me to endure marriage. But she?

And despite all this, if we, I and F, had equal rights, if we had the same prospects and possibilities, I would not marry. But this blind alley into which I have slowly pushed her life makes it an unavoidable duty for me, although its consequences are by no means unpredictable. Some secret law of human relationship is at work here.’

15 August 1913
‘Agonies in bed towards morning. Saw only solution in jumping out of the window.’

21 August 1914
‘Began with such hope and was then repulsed by all three stories; today more so than ever. It may be true that the Russian story ought to be worked on only after The Trial. In this ridiculous hope, which apparently has only some mechanical notion behind it of how things work, I start The Trial again - The effort wasn’t entirely without result.’

29 August 1914
‘The end of one chapter a failure; another chapter, which began beautifully, I shall hardly - or rather certainly not - be able to continue as beautifully while at the time, during the night, I should certainly have succeeded with it. But I must not forsake myself, I am entirely alone.’


The Diary Junction

Arthur Schnitzler whistling

Arthur Schnitzler, the Austrian author who wrote sexy plays and stream-of-consciousness short stories long before they were fashionable, died 80 years ago today. He was also a committed diarist, documenting some parts of his life - not least his sexual activity - in meticulous detail. The diaries have only been published in German, in ten volumes; and even English-language biographies, which rely on the diary material, provide few verbatim quotes.

Schnitzler was born in Vienna in 1862, the son of a prominent Hungarian-Jewish doctor. He studied medicine at the city’s university until 1885, thereafter working at the city’s general hospital. He had a strong interest in psychiatry and was a friend of Sigmund Freud; but it was writing that attracted him most.

Schnitzler’s early literary reputation was largely gained through his plays, starting with Anatol in 1893, and then, in 1900, the now-popular Der Reigen (Hands Around, also known as La Ronde). This play - in which ten pairs of characters are shown before and after sex - was not actually performed until 1920, but led to the author being branded as a pornographer.

Encyclopedia Britannica summarises Schnitzler’s literary style: ‘Most at home in creating a single, precisely shaded mood for a one-act play or short story, [he] often evoked the atmosphere of the corrupt self-deception he saw in the last years of the Habsburg empire. He explored human psychology, portraying egotism in love, fear of death, the complexities of the erotic life, and the morbidity of spirit induced by a weary introspection.’ He also criticised the military code of conduct in various works, not least in his most well-known novel, Lieutenant Gustl, published at the turn of the century. This latter is considered one of the first German-language works of fiction to rely on stream-of-consciousness writing.

In 1903, Schnitzler married the actress Olga Gussman, with whom he had two children. His later years were largely spent in a villa overlooking Vienna where he devoted most of his time to writing fiction. His 1926 novella Traumnovelle (Dream Story) was turned into a major film by Stanley Kubrick in 1999 (Eyes Wide Shut). Schnitzler’s married daughter committed suicide in 1930, and he himself died on 21 October 1931. His works were banned by the Nazi party in Germany, and then also in Austria - indeed, they were among those thrown into the flames when Joseph Goebbels organized book burnings. Further biographical information is available from Wikipedia or Encyclopaedia Britannica.

In addition to his other writing, Schnitzler meticulously kept a diary from the age of 17 until two days before his death. The manuscript, which runs to almost 8,000 pages, is considered among the most significant of German and European diary literature. Long before his death, Schnitzler stipulated that the volumes of the diaries to the year 1899 should not be published for twenty years after his death, and the remainder not for forty years. In fact, it was not until around 1980 that the Austrian Academy of Sciences began a long-term project to publish the diary, in ten volumes (the last appeared in 2000), with the title, Arthur Schnitzler - Tagebuch.

I can find no extracts or verbatim examples from Schnitzler’s diaries in English on the internet. However, an academic article about them, written by Andrew C Wisely (a Schnitzler specialist and associate professor of German at Baylor University) is freely available online at Googlebooks. The article - The Task of Memory: The Diary Project - takes up one chapter in Wisely’s Arthur Schnitzler and Twentieth-Century Criticism, published by Camden House in 2004. Wisely says the diaries are ‘most notable for Schnitzler’s casual descriptions of sexual conquests - he was often in relationships with several women at once, and for a period of some years he kept a record of every orgasm.’

Schnitzler’s Century, by Peter Gay and published by W W Norton & Co in 2001, relies extensively on extracts from Schnitzler’s diaries, however it only quotes verbatim extracts rarely. Here is one, dated 4 July 1887: ‘In the early morning, I passed her room, whistling. The second time she appeared, I, quickly into the room, lock the door and take her.’ Some pages can be viewed on the Amazon website. See also The Guardian for a review by Nicholas Lezard.

Lezard draws attention to an early moment in Schnitzler’s life: ‘The incident with which [Gay] kicks off his history, and which he makes a kind of focal epiphany, is the moment when Schnitzler’s doctor father finds his 16-year-old son’s diary. Arthur, his father discovered, had been indulging in some precocious sexual exploits. Schnitzler senior marches the young man off to his study and forces him to read ‘Moritz Kaposi’s three-volume standard treatise on syphilis and skin diseases complete with explicit and repellent illustrations’. ’

A labile equilibrium

Following on from Friday’s article, it’s also 120 years since the birth of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Austrian born but one of the most influential figures in British philosophy during the 20th century. He was a bit of a diarist too, with a penchant for coded entries about his private life as well as somewhat existential musings, such as ‘I feel as if my intellect was in a very labile equilibrium.’

The youngest of eight children, Wittgenstein was born on 26 April 1889, and raised in a rich and intellectual Viennese family. He studied engineering in Berlin and Manchester, but became interested in the foundations of mathematics and pursued philosophical studies with Bertrand Russell and G E Moore at Cambridge. Wittgenstein’s father died in 1913, leaving Wittgenstein independently very wealthy, although he donated some of his inheritance to Austrian artists and writers.

With the onset of war, he volunteered for the Austro-Hungarian army, and saw action on the Russian front and in Italy, where he was taken as a prisoner of war in November 1918. As a soldier he had kept notebooks and these became the basis for Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, a book-length treatise on his picture theory of language which, while still an Italian prisoner, he managed to write and send to Russell in Cambridge. It was not published until 1921, but nevertheless became and remains one of the most important philosophical works of the period.

After the war, Wittgenstein gave away the rest of his fortune to his siblings. According to Wikipedia’s long and detailed biography, he felt that giving money to the poor could only corrupt them further, whereas the rich would not be harmed by it. Having denounced any further need to work on philosophy and having embraced Christianity, he trained as a teacher in Austria, and spent some years working in a village school. Eventually, though, the pull of philosophy, through the Vienna Circle especially which had been so influenced by Tractatus, took him back to Cambridge in 1929.

Thereafter, he developed the idea that there is nothing wrong with ordinary language as it stands, and that many traditional philosophical problems were only illusions brought on by misunderstandings about language and related subjects, thus helping to inspire a second philosophical movement. In 1939, he was appointed chair of philosophy at Cambridge, a position he held until resigning in 1947, although during the war he volunteered as a hospital porter and laboratory assistant. But Wittgenstein was always restless, moving to Norway, or Russia, or Ireland or back to Austria at different times, for different reasons. He died in 1951

Wittgenstein’s diary output appears to have been collated into two parts: the notebooks he wrote during the First World War, and the so-called Koder Diaries from the 1930s. Some information about the former can be found in Ludwig Wittgenstein: Public and Private Occasions, edited by James Carl Klagge and Alfred Nordmann, and published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2003. Some pages are freely available to view on Googlebooks.

It states: ‘On August 8, 1914, Wittgenstein began keeping a diary. On that day he traded a larger manuscript volume for a military uniform, anxiously asking himself whether he would still be able to work. A week later, he suddenly started writing in an illegible code, and yet another week later Wittgenstein divided his diary in two: On left pages he recorded private matters in his secret code, while the pages on the right contained philosophical remarks in normal script.’

These diaries, a footnote explains, were published in two entirely different books: Notebooks of 1914-1916 providing the immediate philosophical background to Tractatus (peak inside at Amazon); and an ‘unauthorised publication’ of the coded entries in Geheime Tagebücher, which ‘arguably offers glimpses of a larger private and spiritual background’.

The Koder diaries, written in the 1930s in Cambridge and Norway, were first edited by Ilse Somavilla and published in 1997 under the title Denkbewegungen or Movements of Thought. The book mentioned above - Ludwig Wittgenstein: Public and Private Occasions - is, in fact, mostly about these diaries.

A slightly earlier book - Wittgenstein: Biography & Philosophy edited by Klagge and published by Cambridge University Press in 2001 - has an essay by Nordmann entitled The Sleepy Philosopher: How to Read Wittgenstein’s Diaries. A good review of the book, by Juliet Floyd, can be found on the website of Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. She says: ‘Alfred Nordmann’s thoughtful essay warns against the naïve use of Wittgenstein’s diaries as a kind of magical key to the unlocking of his thought, while arguing that the kind of spiritual exercises Wittgenstein works through in them exemplify his philosophical methods.’

She also compares the two sets of diaries: ‘His diaries from the First World War were composed in unbelievably dire, existentially limiting conditions, surrounded by death and killing. The diaries from the 1930’s were composed in crises years, years during which Wittgenstein turned forty, decided not to marry, emigrated, faced the impact of his decision to earn a philosophical living by his own hand, meditated on his Jewishness, reacted to the reception of his early work, . . and tried to come to terms with his own internal philosophical drive, struggling to clarify and make habitable the philosophical place he had reached by the end of the First World War.’

Here are two quotes from Wittgenstein’s diary embedded in Nordmann’s essay in Wittgenstein: Biography & Philosophy (partly viewable on Googlebooks):

‘At the end of October or early November 1931 Wittgenstein notes: “I can lie like that - or also like that - or best of all, by telling the truth quite sincerely. So I often say to myself.”

Indeed, throughout these diaries Wittgenstein is worried that he might be lying even when saying the truth. It is as if he first allows a thought to occur, then judges whether he has caught himself in a moment of self-deception or self-revelation. As an attempt to write his life or to attain self-knowledge, the diaries are therefore characterised by editorial comments, as are his manuscripts and typescripts.

“Everything or nearly everything I do, these entries included, is tinted by vanity & the best I can do is as it were to separate, to isolate the vanity & do the right thing in spite of it even though it is always watching. I cannot chase it away. Only sometimes is it not present.” ’

Another essay in the same book includes this quote.

31 January 1937
‘I feel as if my intellect was in a very labile equilibrium: so as if a comparatively minor jolt could bring it to snap over. It is like when one sometimes feels close to crying, feels the approaching crying fit. One should then try to breath quite calmly, regularly, deeply until the fity dissipates.’

Brod’s diaries in Kafkaesque story

Kafka - author of The Trial and The Castle - is always good for a story, and so much the better if it’s a Kafkaesque one. The Guardian has a full page Kafka news story in its international section today (9 July), but it’s sourced, I’m sure, from a story in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. While The Guardian uses a completely spurious lead, Haaretz pegs its story to the 125th anniversary of Kafka’s birth on 3 July. Of interest to this blog, though, is Brod, Max Brod who is credited with first promoting Kafka’s work. Like Kafka, Brod was also a diarist, but unlike Kafka’s diaries, Brod’s diaries are missing.

Here is the first paragraph of this morning’s Kafka story in The Guardian: ‘Scholars of the 20th-century writer Franz Kafka were in a state of suspense last night at the news that the remains of his estate, which have been hoarded in a Tel Aviv flat for decades, may soon be revealed.’ Unfortunately, there’s nothing in the article to explain the use of the phrase ‘in a state of suspense last night’.

Here is the first paragraph of the more sober story published by Haaretz a day earlier: ‘On a quiet street in the heart of Tel Aviv, not far from Ben-Gurion Boulevard, stands an old apartment building with a well-tended garden in front. The exterior does not reveal the exciting story that has been hidden for decades inside the building, to which the eyes of scholars and lovers of literature are now turned: Many researchers believe that in a ground-floor apartment there can be found the remnants of the estate of the great 20th-century writer Franz Kafka, whose 125th birthday was celebrated on July 3.’

Kafka died in 1924, leaving his estate and papers in the hands of his friend Max Brod, another Jewish writer, who then did much to promote Kafka’s writing. It is well known that Kafka despite being asked by Brod to destroy his unpublished works, did not do so. Brod defended his action by saying he had told Kafka of his intentions not to comply, and that, therefore, if Kafka had truly wanted the works burned, he would have left them to a different executor.

With Hitler’s advances, Brod moved to Israel in 1939, taking Kafka’s papers with him. Many of these were eventually transferred to archives, but Brod kept hold of ‘a great deal of varied material’. Brod died in 1968, leaving his estate, including whatever Kafka papers he still held, to his secretary, Ilse Esther Hoffe. And it is Hoffe who lived in the Tel Aviv flat, ‘the old apartment building with a well-tended garden', but who died last year, aged 101. According to Haaretz, she had sold a few of the Kafka papers, but had jealously held on to rest, refusing to show them to any one.

Haaretz talked to Nurit Pagi, who is currently writing her doctorate on Brod at the University of Haifa. She said: ‘Everyone was trying to get to this material, but came away empty-handed. . . It’s like a Kafkaesque detective puzzle that someone doesn't want solved. All the people who are doing research on Brod are telling each other: If you hear anything, let me know.’ (The Guardian article, incidentally, said Haaretz called the story ‘Kafkaesque’, another slight inaccuracy.)

Among Kafka’s works saved by Brod, and later published, were his diaries. Kafka started writing a diary in 1910, aged 27 (possibly at the suggestion of Brod) and continued until near the end of his life. Wikipedia has information on the diaries, and The Diary Junction provides links to both German and English versions freely available online.

Interestingly, however, Brod was also a keen diarist, and his diaries formed part of the estate left to Hoffe. According to Haaretz, a German publisher, Artemis and Winkler, paid Hoffe a five-figure advance for Brod’s diaries in the 1980s, but never received them. In 1993, the German news magazine Der Spiegel reported that Hoffe had removed the Brod diaries from her apartment and transferred them to a safe at a bank in Tel Aviv, where they remain to this day. Artemis and Winkler is now owned by a large publisher, apparently, who is still negotiating access to the diaries. They are thought to contain intimate details about Brod’s life, and may well provide interesting information on Kafka’s life.