Living in the Shadow of the Freud Family
By addebook • Jul 2nd, 2008 • Category: Medicine •
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Living in the Shadow of the Freud Family
Living in the Shadow of the Freud Family
By Sophie Freud
Publisher: Praeger Publishers
Number Of Pages: 472
Publication Date: 2007-04-30
ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0275994155
ISBN-13 / EAN: 9780275994150
Binding: Hardcover
“I had to do something to escape Hitler’s clutches,” writes Esti Freud. Yet she waits with her then-16-year-old daughter, Sophie in Paris, until German canons can be heard in the distance, before deciding to escape by bicycle across France as Sophie keeps looking back to see whether German tanks will overtake them. Both women survive by sheer miracle and, in their own ways, come to feel a need to keep a personal record of those tumultuous times. In a memoir written at age 79, Esti Freud, daughter-in-law of Sigmund Freud and wife of his oldest son Martin, looks back on her life that began before the 20th century, was lived on three continents, and stretched through two world wars and the Holocaust. Twenty years after her mother’s death, daughter Sophie turned to Esti’s memoir as a scaffold for this book, expanding it through family letters and archival material. Out of these documents the author has created a fascinating, many-voiced mosaic–the story of a famous family and of a century seen through the eyes of many characters. Indomitable Esti was not an easy person to love. While she establishes herself professionally three times, in three different languages, her troubled family relationships leave her lonely, often deeply unhappy. Sophie confides that Esti died without son or daughter at her side. This work gives an insider’s, in-law view of the family Freud, its foundations, and flaws. The relationship between Esti, daughter of a wealthy Vienna attorney and her husband Martin Freud is foreshadowed by the young lovers’ fathers. At first meeting Esti, Sigmund told his son the glamorous woman was “too beautiful” for the clan, meaning her splendor belied a lifestyle not conducive to the frugal Freud ways. And Esti’s father, on hearing of her love for Martin, expressed regret she was involved with a man who was “not a financially favorable linkage,” and that his family was not respectable since patriarch Sigmund was “just another psychiatrist, and one who writes pornography books at that.” Thus begins the ill-fated relationship that would rock two families and a generation of children to come. Sophie weaves into the text letters she inherited, including letters from Martin while he was a prisoner of war, and excerpts from her own diary, kept as an adolescent. The resulting mosaic will fascinate–and perhaps disturb–readers interested in Freud and psychoanalysis, as well as those intrigued by relationships and family.
Summary: It is more than a family portrait.
Rating: 5
Sophie Freud’s new book is more than a history of a famous family in the 20thc, but a history of the century in itself. The long arc of Germany’s attempt to achieve at least European, if not worldwide, supremacy, is told through the eyes of a family that lived it.
The book is neither long nor hard to read, therefore, I was disappointed when Sophie thanks her editors for helping her cut it down. I want to read it all. Basically the book is Sophie’s mother’s autobiography. Said Ernestine, who liked to be called Esti married Martin Freud, one of Sigmund Freud’s sons. She wrote her book late in her life, and her writings are in Roman type, whereas Sophie’s comments are in italics, and thus this whole book which was written AND edited by Sophie becomes a dual biography.
Accompanying the stories of these 2 women are many, many letters written by other members of the Freud family, and from them we can make our own judgements about the people and compare them to the ones that Sophie makes. These other letters are in various fonts.
The mother, Esti, seems at first to be a simple lovely girl in love with Martin, but Sigmund says of her “she is not only maliciously meshugge but also mad in the medical sense.” We see this in the early years of their marriage. Talk about dysfunctional families!
The family split up in 1938: Esti and Sophie went to Paris, and Martin and his son, Walter, went to London. For the next 4 years mother and daughter struggled to keep alive, to find decent lodging and food, and to keep barely one step ahead of Hitler as he ran down France. Vichy France became a haven for the Freuds for a while, but eventually they went to Casablanca and then to Lisbon, and finally to the USA. (The movie “Casablanca” may have been fiction, but it was a fiction that many people really lived.)
I have to admire both women who essentially became trilingual in a very short time. For all of Esti’s complaining and bitterness (her letters to Walter during the war years must have been devastating to the young man who could do nothing to help). But as a speech therapist, Esti, who first taught in Vienna, learned to teach both in France and then in the USA. Sophie went straight from the lycee in France (already a 2nd language for her) to Radcliffe College. Both women earned Ph.Ds.
Don’t be dismayed by the family tree at the beginning. In fact, ignore it at first. However, I wish that dates had been included. The important characters will become clear upon reading. At times the book sounds like a novel, but it is not. Sophie and her brother were thus separated for most of their lives. Walter died not long before Sophie finished the book and his children found about 200 letters from their mother to him. Although most of this book was finished, Sophie had to incorporate many of them into her new publication.
This is a sad book, but who cannot say that the 20th c, esp. the first half, was not sad, in the deepest sense of the word? I enoyed the book thoroughly and I think you will as well. Do not expect to find out much about Sigmund however - that is reserved for other books. You will find out about many members of both the Freud and Drucker (Esti’s family) families - some uplifting news and some destructive habits. Many of the Freud family were able to escape Austria, but many were not and were thus exterminated. The last page of the book which contains the final words of both Esti and Sophie (for now at least - let’s hope she writes more) is indeed sad. I did not mind reading it early on. You choose.
Summary: A compelling memoir
Rating: 5
Sophie Freud’s recent book, Living Under the Shadow of the Freud Family, is most interesting and compelling. She masterfully interweaves perspectives on the private (and public) lives of her family and herself, thus offering a memoir that at times reads like a first-rate novel.
Professor Freud’s wit, mischievousness, and clear-eyed vision pervades the various narratives and adds a most important and entertaining dimension–not only in her diary entries but in her numerous candid and often wonderfully blunt assessments of others (family members, professors, etc.) and in her self-reflexive comments (e.g. when she reflects puckishly that she may be writing this book to display her own achievements for the Annee Scolaire prize–”who knows, perhaps I am writing this book just for that purpose”). It is this kind of serious play, throughout, that makes this memoir so very readable and revealing, at the same time Sophie Freud’s commentary or her mother’s autobiographical narrative or numerous letters continue to remind readers of the shadow of her grandfather and other relatives (Tante Janne, her brother, her father, et al. ) and of the sinister shadow of Hitler and WW2 which impinges trenchantly on the lives of the Freud family, not to mention the world. I am reminded of the author, W.G, Sebald, photos included. In short, among other things, I have come away with a very deep and complex feeling for Professor Freud’s mother, along with multiple insights into her own fascinating self.
Summary: Excellent book
Rating: 4
This book is a fascinating read, both in terms of family dynamics and world history. Through letters, diaries and commentary from various family members, Sophie Freud (Sigmund Freud’s granddaughter) gives life to her mother Esti, including her troubled marriage to Freud’s son Martin, her struggle to be accepted by the Freud family, and her difficult relationships with her children. The book also has moments of historic drama, such as when Sophie and her mother flee Paris by bicycle two days before the Nazis invade. There are also bits of humor, such as when the teenage Sophie’s diary reveals that she is much more concerned about boys, her figure, and finishing her qualifying exams than she is about the approaching Nazis. Overall, the book provides unique insight into a complicated (and famous) family at an especially charged time in history. I really enjoyed it.Living in the Shadow of the Freud Family
Summary: Living History
Rating: 5
Sophie Freud, the author of this wonderful book, has kept a diary most of her life, as did her mother, Esti, along with many letters and documents of her fractured family. These documents are the scaffolding of a compelling story of romance, marriage, betrayal, escape and ultimately, the need to reinvent one’s self in another country. Ms.Freud uses these papers (in French and German), along with her own commentary and that of her brother. The tale of her escape from Paris on a bicycle with her mother is vivid. She also uses photographs of her family and documents which increase the appeal of the book.
For anyone interested in a life of the twentieth century, with war, loss and emigration, this is a wonderful book.
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