Rare Letter Detailing Freud’s Jewish Background To Be Auctioned Off

Sigmund Freud Image by Getty Images

By JTA August 29, 2018

(JTA) — A Los Angeles auction house will offer a handwritten letter by Sigmund Freud detailing his family history and education.

In it, the father of psychoanalysis describes how his parents came from Galicia in present-day Ukraine to the Moravian town of Freiberg, now the Czech Republic, where Freud was born.

According to Nate D. Sanders Auctions, which will be putting the letter up for sale on Thursday, the four-page letter, dated June 30, 1912, was written to Freud’s colleague, noted psychoanalyst Dr. Paul Feder, on his personal stationery.

“This is a rare, personal, first-hand description of Freud’s Jewish heritage. It is clear in reading this letter that Freud respects the importance of his Jewish ancestry and is happy to share it with his colleagues,” auction owner Nate Sanders said in a statement.

“I was born on the 6th of May [18]56 in Freiberg/Moravia,” writes Freud. “My father and mother came from Galicia. My mother, nee Nathansohn, from Brody, of very distinguished ancestry (the Nathansohn-Kallir family), my father of the merchant class. According to tradition, as he once reported to me, the Freud family is said to sometime have left their hometown of Köln [Cologne] during a period of persecution of Jews and then to have migrated eastward,” Freud wrote, describing his Jewish roots.

Bidding for the letter is set to start at $25,000.

Alyssa Fisher is a news writer at the Forward. Email her at fisher@forward.com, or follow her on Twitter at @alyssalfisher

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO