Freud family


The family of Sigmund Freud, the pioneer of psychoanalysis, lived in Austria and Germany until the 1930s before emigrating to England, Canada and the United States. Several of Freud's descendants have become well known in different fields.

Freud's parents and siblings

was born to Jewish Galician parents in the Moravian town of Freiberg, in the then Austrian Empire. He was the eldest child of Jacob Freud, a wool merchant, and his third wife Amalia Nathansohn. Jacob Freud was born in Tysmenitz, Galicia, the eldest child of Schlomo and Peppi, née Hoffmann, Freud. His two brothers Abae and Josef had difficulties that concerned the family, the former because of his mentally incapacitated children, the latter because his business dealings came under criminal investigation.
Jacob Freud had two surviving children from his first marriage to Sally Kanner :
  1. Emanuel
  2. Philipp
Jacob's second marriage to Rebecca was childless.
Amalia Freud was the daughter of Jacob Nathansohn and Sara Wilenz from Brody, Galicia. They later moved to Vienna. Her brother Hermann, who was a stockbroker in Odessa, was Freud's favourite uncle. She had three other brothers: Nathan, Adolf and Julius. Jacob and Amalia Freud had eight children:
  1. Sigmund
  2. Julius
  3. Anna
  4. Regina Debora
  5. Marie
  6. Esther Adolfine
  7. Pauline Regine
  8. Alexander Gotthold Ephraim
Julius Freud died in infancy.
Anna married Ely Bernays, the elder brother of Sigmund's wife Martha. There were four daughters: Judith, Lucy, Hella, Martha and one son, Edward. In 1892 the family moved to the United States where Edward Bernays became a major influence in modern public relations. He married Doris E. Fleischman who became known as a prominent feminist activist. Their daughters are Doris Bernays Held, a psychotherapist who married Richard Held a neuroscientist, and Anne Bernays a writer and editor, as was her husband, Justin Kaplan.
Rosa married a lawyer, Heinrich Graf. Their son, Hermann was killed in the First World War; their daughter, Cäcilie, committed suicide after an unhappy love affair. Rosa died in the Treblinka extermination camp in 1942.
Mitzi married her cousin Moritz Freud. There were three daughters: Margarethe, Lily, Martha and one son, Theodor who died in a drowning accident. Martha, who was known as Tom, worked as a children's book illustrator. After the suicide of her husband, Jakob Seidman, a journalist, she took her own life. Their daughter, Angela, was sent to live with relatives in Haifa. Lily became an actress and in 1917 married the actor Arnold Marlé. They subsequently adopted Angela. Mitzi died in the Treblinka extermination camp in 1942.
Dolfi did not marry and remained in the family home to care for her parents. She died in Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1943.
Pauli married Valentine Winternitz and emigrated to the United States where their daughter Rose Beatrice was born. After the death of her husband she and her daughter returned to Europe. Rose married Ernst Waldinger, a poet, in 1923. They moved to New York City after the war where a daughter, Ruth, was born. Pauli died in the Treblinka extermination camp in 1942.
Alexander Freud married Sophie Sabine Schreiber. Their son, Harry, emigrated to the United States where he married Leli Margaret Horn.
Both Freud's half-brothers emigrated to Manchester, England, shortly before the rest of the Freud family moved to Vienna in 1860.
Emanuel Freud married Maria Milow in Freiberg where their first two children were born: John, the "inseparable playmate" of Freud's early childhood; and Pauline. Their other children were born in Manchester: Matilda, Harriet, Bertha, Henrietta and Soloman. None of the children married.
Philipp Freud married Bloomah Frankel. There were two children: Pauline who married Fred Hartwig ; and Morris. The death of the childless Pauline in 1951 marked the end of the Manchester Freuds.
Freud visited his half-brothers and their families in England twice, in 1875 while still a student, and again in 1908. He kept in touch through a regular correspondence with Sam Freud. They would eventually meet again in London in 1938.

Persecution and emigration

The systematic persecution of Jews by Nazi Germany and the ensuing Holocaust had a profound effect on the family. Four of Freud's five sisters died in concentration camps: in 1942 Mitzi Freud and Paula Winternitz were transported to Theresienstadt and taken from there to the Maly Trostinets extermination camp, near Minsk, where they were murdered. In 1943 Dolfi Freud died in Theresienstadt of internal bleeding, probably due to advanced starvation and Rosa Graf was deported to Treblinka, where she was killed. Freud's brother, Alexander, escaped with his family to Switzerland shortly before the Anschluss and they subsequently emigrated to Canada. Freud's sons Oliver, a civil engineer, and Ernst Ludwig, an architect, lived and worked in Berlin until Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933 after which they fled with their families to France and England respectively. Oliver Freud and his wife later emigrated to the United States. Their daughter Eva Freud had remained in France and died there of an infection contracted during an abortion.
Freud and his remaining family left Nazi-occupied Vienna in 1938 after Ernest Jones, the then President of the International Psychoanalytic Association, secured immigration permits for them to move to Britain. Permits were also secured for Freud's housekeeper and maid, his doctor, Max Schur and his family, as well as a number of Freud's colleagues and their families. Freud's grandson, Ernst Halberstadt, was the first to leave Vienna, initially for Paris, before going on to London where after the war he would adopt the name Ernest Freud and train as a psychoanalyst. Next to leave for Paris were Ernestine, Sophie and Walter Freud, the wife and children of Freud's eldest son, Martin. Walter joined his father in London. His mother and sister remained in France and subsequently emigrated to the United States. His maternal grandmother, Ida Drucker, was deported from Biarritz in 1942 and died in Auschwitz. Freud's sister-in-law, Minna Bernays, was the first to leave for London early in May 1938. She was followed by his son, Martin, on 14 May and then his daughter Mathilde and her husband, Robert Hollitscher, on 24 May. Freud, his wife and daughter, Anna, left Vienna on 4 June, accompanied by their household staff and a doctor. Their arrival at Victoria Station, London on 6 June attracted widespread press coverage. Freud's Vienna consulting room was replicated in faithful detail in the new family home, 20 Maresfield Gardens in Hampstead, North London.

The war years

After Freud's death in 1939, Martha and Anna Freud made their home available to relatives and friends fleeing the Nazi occupation of Europe. In 1941, following the death of Martha's sister, Minna, Dorothy Burlingham became a permanent member of the household. From their first meeting in Vienna in 1925, Anna and Dorothy developed “intimate relations that closely resembled those of lesbians”, though Anna “categorically denied the existence of a sexual relationship”. Dorothy was a patient of Freud's and her four children, Bob, Mary, Katrina and Michael, were among the first of Anna's after she had begun her own psychoanalytic practice. They collaborated in establishing the Hampstead War Nursery which provided therapy and residential care for children whose lives had been disrupted by the war. Their work laid the foundations for the post-war Hampstead Clinic.
Martin and Walter Freud were both interned in 1940 as enemy aliens. Following a change in government policy on internment, both were subsequently recruited to the Pioneer Corps. After the war, denied recognition as a lawyer by the British legal profession, Martin Freud ran a tobacconist's in Bloomsbury. His autobiographical memoir of Freud family life in Vienna, Glory Reflected, was published in 1952. Walter Freud was deported to an internment camp in New South Wales, Australia. On his return to England in 1941 he was recruited to the Pioneer Corps and subsequently to the SOE. In April 1945 he was parachuted behind enemy lines in Austria. Advised to change his name in case of capture, he refused, declaring : “I want the Germans to know a Freud is coming back”. He narrowly survived separation from his comrades and took the leading role in securing the surrender of the strategically important Zeltweg aerodrome in southern Austria. When the war ended he was assigned to war crimes investigation work in Germany. Given the fate of his great aunts and maternal grandmother at the hands of the Nazis, he was particularly pleased to help secure the prosecution of directors of the firm that supplied Zyklon B gas to the concentration camps, two of whom were executed for war crimes. In 1946 he left the army with the rank of major. The following year he was granted British citizenship and resumed his career as an industrial chemist.
Retribution for the murder of his aunts was also a concern for Alexander Freud's son Harry. He arrived in post-war Vienna as a US army officer to investigate the circumstances of their deportation and helped track down and bring before the courts Anton Sauerwald, the Nazi commissar charged with the supervision of the Freuds’ assets. Sauerwald gained early release from prison in 1947 when, at the request of his wife, Anna Freud intervened on his behalf, revealing that he had, by concealing evidence of Freud's Swiss bank account, "used his office as our appointed commissar in such a manner as to protect my father".

Freud's children and descendants

married Martha Bernays in 1886. Martha was the daughter of Berman Bernays and Emmeline Philipp. Her grandfather, Isaac Bernays, was a Chief Rabbi of Hamburg. Two of her uncles were prominent academics: Jakob Bernays was a professor of classics at the University of Bonn; Michael Bernays was a professor of German literature at the University of Munich. Her sister, Minna Bernays, became a permanent member of the Freud household after the death of her fiancé in 1895.
Sigmund and Martha Freud had six children and eight grandchildren:
  1. Mathilde Freud married Robert Hollitscher, and had no children
  2. Jean-Martin Freud married Ernestine Drucker, and had 2 children:
  3. #Anton Walter Freud married Annette Krarup and had 3 children
  4. ##David Freud, married Cilla Dickinson and had 3 children:
  5. ###Andrew Freud
  6. ###Emily Freud
  7. ###Juliet Freud
  8. ##Ida Freud, married N. Fairbairn
  9. ##Caroline Freud, married N. Penney
  10. #Sophie Freud married Paul Loewenstein, and had 3 children:
  11. ##Andrea Freud Loewenstein
  12. ##Dania Loewenstein, married S. Jekel
  13. ##George Loewenstein
  14. Oliver Freud married Ella Haim; Henny Fuchs. From his marriage to Henny Fuchs he had one child:
  15. #Eva Freud
  16. Ernst L. Freud married Lucie Brasch, and had 3 children:
  17. #Stephan Gabriel Freud married Lois Blake ; Christine Ann Potter. From his marriage to Lois Blake he had 1 child:
  18. ##Dorothy Freud
  19. #Lucian Michael Freud married Kathleen Garman, 2 children; Lady Caroline Blackwood. He also had 4 children by Suzy Boyt, 4 by Katherine McAdam, 2 by Bernardine Coverley, 1 by Jacquetta Eliot, Countess of St Germans and 1 by Celia Paul. His children include:
  20. ##Annie Freud
  21. ##Annabel Freud
  22. ##Alexander Boyt
  23. ##Jane McAdam Freud
  24. ##Paul McAdam Freud
  25. ##Rose Boyt
  26. ##Lucy McAdam Freud married Peter Everett; 2 children
  27. ##Bella Freud married James Fox; 1 child
  28. ##Isobel Boyt
  29. ##Esther Freud married David Morrissey; 3 children
  30. ##David McAdam Freud, 4 children. Partner of Debbi Mason
  31. ##Susie Boyt married to Tom Astor; 2 children
  32. ##Francis Michael Eliot
  33. ##Frank Paul ; 2 children
  34. #Clemens Rafael Freud married June Flewett in 1950 and had 5 children:
  35. ##Nicola Freud, married to Richard Allen, had 5 children:
  36. ###Tom Freud
  37. ###Jack Freud, married to Kate Melhuish
  38. ###Martha Freud, partner of Adam Smith
  39. ###Max Freud
  40. ###Harry Freud
  41. ##Dominic Freud married Patty Freud, and had 3 children.
  42. ##Emma Freud partner of Richard Curtis, and had 4 children
  43. ##Matthew Freud married: Caroline Hutton, and had 2 children; Elisabeth Murdoch, and had 2 children
  44. ##Ashley Freud
  45. Sophie Freud married Max Halberstadt, and had 2 children:
  46. #Ernst Halberstadt married Irene Chambers, and had 1 child:
  47. ##Colin Peter Freud
  48. #Heinz Halberstadt
  49. Anna Freud