Martha Bernays
| Martha Bernays | |
|---|---|
Martha Bernays (1882)
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| Born |
26 July 1861 Hamburg, Germany |
| Died | 2 November 1951 (aged 90) London, England, United Kingdom |
| Spouse(s) | Sigmund Freud (m.1886–1939; his death) |
Martha Bernays (/bərˈneɪz/; German: [bɛɐ̯ˈnaɪs]; 26 July 1861 – 2 November 1951) 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.
Martha Bernays was raised in an observant Orthodox Jewish family. Her grandfather, Isaac Bernays, was the chief rabbi of Hamburg and a distant relative of the German Romantic poet Heinrich Heine and whom Heine frequently mentioned in letters. Isaac's son, Michael Bernays (1834-1897), Martha's uncle, converted to Christianity at an early age and was professor of German at the University of Munich. Although the Bernays and Freud families were well acquainted - her elder brother Eli marrying husband Freud's younger sister, for example - the latter were more liberal Jews, and Freud in particular had no time for ritual observances: Martha told a cousin that "not being allowed to light the Sabbath lights on the first Friday night after her marriage was one of the more upsetting experiences of her life". She was also the aunt of Austrian-born American publicist and "father of public relations",Edward Bernays.
Sigmund and Martha met in April 1882 and after a four-year engagement (1882–1886) they were married on 14 September 1886 in Hamburg.
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 sent over 900 (lengthy) letters to his fiancée, which chart the ups and downs of a tempestuous relationship, marred by outbreaks of jealousy on his part as well as affirmations that "I love you with a kind of passionate enchantment".
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