Martha Bernays

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]

Sources

• EMQUAD

References

1. ^ Letters of Sigmund Freud - selected and edited by Ernst L. Freud, Basic Books, 1960 - pp 7 - ISBN 0-486-27105-6
2. ^ http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/24/world/europe/24iht-web.1224freud.3998915.html?pagewanted=all
3. ^ Eysenck, Hans. Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire Transaction Publishers, 2004

See also

• Freud family

External links

• The Freud Museum, London
• Sigmund Freud Chronology, Marriage to Martha Bernays

Persondata
Name	Bernays, Martha
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1861
Place of birth
Date of death	1951
Place of death