Martha Bernays (26 July, 1861, in Hamburg – 2 November, 1951, in London) was the wife of Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud.
Bernays was the second daughter of Emmeline and Berman Bernays. Her paternal grandfather Isaac Bernays was a Chief Rabbi of Hamburg. Sigmund Freud and Bernays met in April 1882 and after a four year engagement (1882-1886) they got married on 14 September 1886 in Hamburg. [1]
Freud and Bernays’s love letters sent during the engagement years, according to Freud's official biographer Ernest Jones who read all the letters "would be a not unworthy contribution to the great love literature of the world". Freud and Bernays had six children: Mathilde (b. 1887), Jean-Martin (b. 1889), Oliver (b. 1891), Ernst (b. 1892), Sophie (b. 1893), and Anna (b. 1895). Bernays’s younger sister, Minna Bernays, is known to be one of Sigmund’s friends - she is also speculated to have been Freud's mistress. This claim was controversial at first but the publication of a hotel log has prompted some Freud scholars, including his defender Peter Gay, to regard the conjecture of Freud and Minna having an affair as probably accurate. [2][3]
Contents |