#61 / Editorial

A special Vienna issue…

Ruben Honigmann, in a text that is both funny and thorough, had already described in K. how he saw himself as the inheritor of a German-Jewish language that no one knows or even wants to know any more. He continues his introspection on the complexity of a kaleidoscopic Jewish identity by taking us this time to Vienna, the city of his legendary grandmother. This week, his new testimony questions, with humour and thoroughness as always, his desire to acquire all the identity papers he possibly can…

Joel Whitebook’s text takes us to another Viennese childhood, that of Sigmund Freud, marked by his two mothers… Anna Freud, the daughter of Freud, confided that her grandmother was “devoted and proud of her [son], as all Jewish mothers are”. But who was the mother of the psychoanalysis inventor? And, for that matter, how many mothers did he have? Relatively little is known about Freud’s relationship with his mother figure, who built his work by exploring the continent of the fathers, the desire of his patients to kill or replace them and the often devastating psychic effects of this forbidden impulse. The mother, central as she is as a sexual object, is surprisingly absent as such. Freud’s own mother, when she appears in his writing, is highly idealised as a young, beautiful mother passionately devoted to her first-born son. Joel Whitebook, the author of an intellectual biography of Freud[1], challenges this myth of the ‘good and loving mother’ that Amalia would have been, the superstitious Galician Jewish mother who seems to have had a far greater influence on the development of psychoanalysis than Freud himself could have perceived. This week, K. publishes the first part of this analysis, which shows a complex Amalia facing her “Sigi”, before, next week, we meet Freud’s second mother, his Catholic “nannie”, old and ugly, but no less important for a young Freud in the midst of his sexual curiosity.

Vienna, again… Is the revival of the Jewish community in Vienna a sign that a new form of diasporic Jewish existence is emerging? This is the stance of Julie Cooper and Dorit Geva who, following the schema of the historian Simon Dubnow, decipher the emergence in Europe of a new form of community, not nationalized, but inserted into a pan-European context. It could serve as a model, capable of becoming an alternative to the national form embodied in the State of Israel and that (perhaps in decline after having dominated) of American Judaism.

 

Notes

1 Joel Whitebook. Freud. An Intellectual Biography. Cambridge University Press, UK, 2017.
History
“I pictured Austria as Germany without Nazism.” A Childhood Fantasy.

“I arrived in France when I was only one year old and waited 37 years to become French. I knew nothing about my homeland Germany, my Germanness was virtual, reduced to a language and a passport. The procedure was expeditious and I received my French birth certificate only six months after I started my naturalization process. Three days later, the dual citizen I had just become was again seized with identity-related restlessness and I contacted the Austrian embassy in Paris. Since 2019, Austria, like Germany, allows the descendants of victims of Nazism to recover the nationality of which their ancestor was deprived. This is my case. »

Culture
Freud’s Two Mothers – Part 1

Anna Freud, Freud’s daughter, said that her grandmother was ‘devoted to and proud of her [son], as Jewish mothers are’. The fact is that this mother, Amalia, a superstitious Galician who spoke mostly Yiddish, had predicted that her Sigmund, on whom she projected her dreams of greatness, would become a great man. But who was the mother of the founder of psychoanalysis? And, by the way, how many mothers did he have? Joel Whitebook, the author of an intellectual biography of Freud, challenges this myth of the “good, loving mother” that Amalia would have been. K. publishes this week the first part of his analysis of Freud’s relationship to his mother figures. Next week we will meet Freud’s second mother, his Catholic “nannie”, old and ugly, but no less important for the young Freud in the midst of his sexual curiosity…

Politics
The View from Leopoldstadt

Is the revival of the Jewish community in Vienna a sign that a new form of diasporic Jewish existence is emerging? This is the stance of Julie Cooper and Dorit Geva who, following the schema of the historian Simon Dubnow, decipher the emergence in Europe of a new form of community, not nationalized, but inserted into a pan-European context. It could serve as a model, capable of becoming an alternative to the national form embodied in the State of Israel and that (perhaps in decline after having dominated) of American Judaism.

With the support of:

Thanks to the Paris office of the Heinrich Böll Foundation for their cooperation in the design of the magazine’s website.