Dear Father Freud,
I landed in Marseilles yesterday and radiantly happy I proclaim myself once more a European. In the Strait of Messina two journalists and I invested in a bottle of champagne to drink the health of the old Europe, to cry ‘abasso!’ and ‘a morte!’ to the dictators and at the same time to think of you: Thank God that you are out of it all. Now I must visit some friends here, meet various literary figures in the shape of Werfel, Ludwig Marcuse1 and Schickele2 and goodness knows who else. And at the beginning of the week I hasten on to Paris, spend three days there and then I shall be with you. I hope you are as well as last year. This time my throat is making only modest protests. At least I shall be able to talk with you. I think of spending three weeks in London and of opening up many practical projects if I
– 168 –
can. But for the moment I just send greetings to all your family and especially to you

Haifa, Mt. Carmel, Beth Moses
8. xi. 38
Dear Father Freud,
It is now raining here with a savage violence; the roar of the breakers thunders up the mountainside as in R. L. Stevenson. Suddenly it has turned into winter. This increases the weight upon our hearts as it means that the time is physically as well as morally and politically dark. You can read and hear what is happening here on the wireless. What is happening in Europe is far more evil and unpleasant. I do not think these appeasers will understand what a price they are making others pay—till they have to pay it themselves.
Are you all right? Have you recovered from the great strain of the operation and its after-effects? Has some order been established in your household? I, at any rate, returned home deeply refreshed from my long stay in London and from being with you and talking with you; perhaps my pleasant sea trip also contributed to this. But now, faced with the task of either selling everything here or leaving

Mt. Carmel
27 Feb. 39
Dear Father Freud,
It would have been wrong if you had concealed from me what you are having to endure once again. In spite of everything at this time I have felt deeply and happily immured in your atmosphere! For I have discovered, and derived a certain consolation from the discovery, that the explanation of the pile of ruins on which we and the dictators now live like rats, is to be found in your work—in your Civilisation and its Discontents. Your ideas alone explain the hatred and
– 176 –
indifference to everything that culture has achieved and signified since Moses. I intend to write an essay on this subject, if you do not wish to do so yourself. Gentlemen are at last able to shake murderers by the hand without falling into disrepute. All ethical principles have been abrogated without the façade of law and order being demolished. What more can Europeans ask? Will America be spared this plague? What do you think about it? For us this question
Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
7. xii. 30
Dear Mr. Zweig,
I was very pleased to find the old warm note in your letter, though I have recently sent you nothing but refusals.
What you say about the Soviet experiment strikes an answering chord in me. We have been deprived by it of a hope—and an illusion—and we have received nothing in exchange. We are moving towards dark times: the apathy of old age ought to enable me to rise above it all, but I cannot help the fact that I am sorry for my seven grandchildren.

I cannot write the yellow book you wish me to. I know too little about the human drive for power, for I have lived my life as a theorist. I am constantly surprised at the tendencies of recent years, which have carried me so far into the world of topical current affairs. Indeed I would like to write nothing more, and yet I am once again writing an Introduction1 for something someone else is doing. I must not say what it is, but it too is an analysis and at the same time ver
Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
7. xii. 30
Dear Mr. Zweig,
I was very pleased to find the old warm note in your letter, though I have recently sent you nothing but refusals.
What you say about the Soviet experiment strikes an answering chord in me. We have been deprived by it of a hope—and an illusion—and we have received nothing in exchange. We are moving towards dark times: the apathy of old age ought to enable me to rise above it all, but I cannot help the fact that I am sorry for my seven grandchildren.
I cannot write the yellow book you wish me to. I know too little about the human drive for power, for I have lived my life as a theorist. I am constantly surprised at the tendencies of recent years, which have carried me so far into the world of topical current affairs. Indeed I would like to write nothing more, and yet I am once again writing an Introduction1 for something someone else is doing. I must not say what it is, but it too is an analysis and at the same time ver
Haifa
9 Sept. 39
Dear Father Freud,
I am sad at not hearing from you, though I appreciate all the reasons for your silence. At the end of August and beginning of September I stayed with Eitingon, and we believed that there had been an improvement in your condition. We comforted ourselves with this thought and we laughed at the reception Moses had received among the Hebrews. I am still worried that in my last letter I said in fun that Adam was going to send a translation of the most impertinent and most stupid review of your book ‘as a punishment’. One should not use such words even in fun to one who has been our help and salvation as you have been, and who now has to suffer so much. Before I fall asleep I often think of how nothing can be done to alleviate that cursed pain of yours. Then I grow angry that I did not become a doctor and that I do not understand anything about such matters.
I would have written before this but the censorship of all mail and the delay con

Eichkamp
1 May 32
Dear and honoured man,
We have been home now for three weeks and this is the first quiet hour I have had alone. No children, no wife,
– 36 –
neither my sister nor my secretary, just the familiar brown cigar and the pale blue light of a cold spring day outside my window-and at once, instead of reading something as I meant to or working away at my new book, I find my way to you to announce my return. It is strange how I think about you in your big flat among your books and the treasures that have risen from the tombs, whose place of origin I have just been visiting. I could not settle down-apart from the children of course-a new creative idea had developed in me following on the war novels (or rather it is an old idea, dating back to 22 or 24, but suddenly it was there all complete) so that I could not pick up the threads of my work. And between me and some of the people I was looking forward to seeing again lay all the bustle of the wide world in which they had had n
[This is a summary or excerpt from the full text of the book or article. The full text of the document is available to subscribers.]
Letter from Arnold Zweig to Sigmund Freud, March 25, 1937
Arnold Zweig
25.3
Do you notice that my eyes are doing well? I am already reading once again. Anna's Ego1 and your Pleasure Principle.2 Both works give me great pleasure, but yours is the man and the Ego is the woman. As is right and proper. The splendid clarity you both have in common. The suppleness of the Ego and the irresistible movement of the argument in the Pleasure Principle are both equally admirable and convincing and the boldness of your observation rejoices my heart. Dear Father Freud, all this you have ventured on our behalf and you have not done it in vain.
Eitingon spent a few days with us here on Mt. Carmel, and next week we intend going to Baalbek and Damascus together.
Greetings to all
Yours
Zweig
Notes to "Letter from Arnold Zweig to Sigmund Freud, March 25, 1937"
Ernst L. Freud
1 Anna Freud: Das Ich und die Abwehrmechanismen. Vienna, Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, 1936; The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence. London, The Hogarth Press, 1937.
2 S. Freud: Beyo
Sanary (Var)
26. vii. 39
Dear Father Freud,
A few lines from the Princess reached me in the midst of my preparations for my departure: you are not well and she is going to see you. But I must go home. I cannot come to you, poor man that Hamlet is. But let me be with you in spirit, with the warmest feelings of gratitude for all you have done for us and for what you have taken upon yourself and with the ardent wish that at last things may go better with you. You have taken so much suffering upon yourself, you do not need any more torment. Now it is enough, and may a peaceful contemplation of your statues, of your thoughts and of your loved ones, take the place of pain. We all wish nothing more profoundly than that things may go well with you, just as you would have it.
In sincere friendship and devotion
Yours
Letter from Arnold Zweig to Sigmund Freud, February 10, 1938
Arnold Zweig
10. ii. 38
I am quite unable to say for what good or bad reasons the despatch or rather the continuation of this letter was delayed. You know it was certainly not indifference on my part. Rather the opposite. I had some correspondence with Dr. Eitingon, arising from André Germain's article, about your plans to move from Vienna. Then I dictated a long essay on the Ten Commandments which I mean to send you as I think you will enjoy it. There is a section in it on the First
– 155 –
Commandment which really has acquired meaning only through your Moses. For it affirms that it was

Yahweh who delivered the Jews from Egypt. A very necessary step since in that way the peace between the Levites and the Yahwites of Kadesh was sealed. Then I finished my Bonaparte in faffa and am just waiting to get Act V before I send it to you. And finally I am preparing for publication a youthful novel of mine; it was written in 1909 and the story takes place in 1908. I wanted to tell you about this.

Mt. Carmel, Haifa, House Dr. Moses
s

5 Aug. 1938
Dear Father Freud,
The gods have given their sign: an unexpected cheque has arrived—from Russia, no further word as yet; and on the 18th I set off on the André Lebon for Marseilles and at the beginning of September I shall be with you and yours. Thank God.
Everything else can be arranged later. I have held back the copy of my new book. I wanted to write something in it specially for you and then get it sent off from Amsterdam. They sent me only two and a half copies here, and one I needed for the Spanish Relief Fund in Denmark and the half-copy (sheets, unbound) for corrections, misprints. But it has only been out a few days.
I hope you are not all suffering from the heat. Here on the mountain it is always bearable but humid, everything gets mouldy. Books on shelves have to be put out and aired in the sunlight, just like beds.
On the balcony next door a Jewish child is singing so out of tune that I had to stop writing bec

Haifa, Mount Carmel, Beth Moses
8. vii. 34
Dear Father Freud,
If one delays too long with a letter that one very much wants to write by hand, in the end one has to resort to the typewriter after all, in order to get rid of all that presses to be said. What presses here is not so much the enclosed letter, which I return to you with warmest thanks, but a medley of news and exclamations, which must go off to you. What a deep satisfaction there is in the events in Germany,1 of which we have only had radio news so far. It transcends all our hopes that the real lords of Germany should have so quickly killed off their rivals. I gave the regime four years and now after 16 months one frightful gang of them has already been eradicated. It would be absurd to pretend that we are not delighted with what has happened, but I must say that the method employed and the people who carried out the purge
– 82 –
are such villains that they awaken a certain pity for the victims. And as long as Göri

Paris 8, 54 rue Galilée
Hôtel Madison Elysée
14 Oct. 37
Dear Father Freud,
This is my first morning in Paris and the first moment I have had to collect my thoughts, and it too is not going to be of much use to me, since all kinds of annoying mail was waiting for me here and my trunk, sent off in advance a fortnight ago, has still not arrived at the hotel but is at the Customs. But I must get in touch with you right away and tell you that I paid a most enjoyable visit to your son Ernst in London. He is calm, cheerful and full of youthful energy, and his house is charming in its simple dignity and modernity. I am always sorry you do not travel any more. You should sample the comforts of modern travel and visit your children and grandchildren in London. It is a wonderful way of getting about if one has no heavy luggage…. I flew, namely, from Amsterdam to London.
The one maddening thing is that I shall probably not now be going home via Vienna. The stars c

Arnold Zweig
Mt. Carmel
16. vii. 38
Dear Father Freud,
Your splendidly bright letter cheered me up so much that I wanted to answer it straightaway. I was just waiting for the arrival of the complete galley proofs of the little novel dating from my youth which I have touched up, so that I could tell you they were on their way to you. Then our friend Eitingon decided on his trip and I gave him the galleys (incomplete) together with a large photo of myself, so that I could appear alongside him at your house. But alas, the Unconscious or something prompted him to leave both photo and galleys behind in the Haifa Customs House, and
– 164 –
since we live de facto in a state of war, the port is hermetically sealed and we will have to wait and see if and when the photo and galleys are returned to me and then how they shall make their way to you.
And now yesterday a bomb was thrown into the Arab market place on a Friday, just when the streets were particularly full and the villagers from the surrounding co
1951, East Germany (DEFA), b/w, 111 min. Feature
Dir.: Falk Harnack
Script: Hans-Robert Bortfeldt, Falk Harnack
Camera: Robert Baberske
Editing: Hildegard Tegener
Music: Ernst Roters
Cast: Kהthe Braun (Stine Teetjen), Erwin Geschonneck (Albert Teetjen), Gefion Helmke, Willy A. Kleinau, Ursula Meiner, Arthur Schrצder.
VHS-NTSC, English subtitles:
The Axe of Wandsbek considers the role that common citizens played in Nazi crimes, at the same time as it portrays a social climate of conflict and contestation. This film adaptation of Arnold Zweig’s novel (1947) is set in 1934 and tells the story of a man who accepts money from the Nazis to serve as a public executioner, and the moral denunciation of his community that drives him to a ruinous end.

Plot Summary
When Albert Teetjen’s Hamburg butcher shop and livelihood are threatened by modern competitors, he and his wife, Stine, worry about their future. Stine pushes her husband to ask his old war buddy, Hans Peter Footh, to help them out financially. Footh has become a Nazi officer and a bourgeois shipping magnate who is trying to force his Jewish competitor out of business. Unknown to the Teetjens, Footh is being pressured by local authorities and his superiors in the Nazi party to solve a local problem. Four communists, among them a Jew, have been sentenced to death after being falsely accused of the shooting death of a Nazi SA (Storm Trooper) officer, but the execution has been postponed because the executioner is ill. Meanwhile, Hitler is scheduled to visit Hamburg and his supporters have the execution carried out without further delay in order to eliminate any disquieting “loose ends” that might mar the Fhrer’s upcoming visit. When Teetjen needs money, Footh offers him two thousand Marks to become the executioner and carry out “the Fhrer’s will.” Teetjen is conflicted at first, but feels his financial troubles leave him no choice. Using his grandfather’s prized axe and disguised in a top hat, tails and mask, Teetjen beheads the four communists. Meanwhile, the innocence of the “Reeperbahn Four” becomes increasingly clear. Despite Teetjen’s attempts to conceal his involvement, the residents of his neighborhood discover that he was a Nazi executioner. Customers shun Teetjen’s newly-renovated store in disgust, and the couple’s money troubles worsen. Stine is driven to suicide by her husband’s lack of remorse, their financial ruin, and the community’s moral condemnation. After finding his wife’s body, Teetjen takes his own life.
Commentary
The Axe of Wandsbek premiered on May 11, 1951 to positive reviews and was seen by over 800,000 people in its first month. After a few weeks, however, the film was pulled from theaters due to a controversy that had shadowed the production from its inception. During writing and filming, officials at the DEFA Studios had become worried that Teetjen’s actions would be seen as the failure of an individual, instead of as the result of a criminal regime. They insisted upon the removal of the line “You poor dog” because it implied both sympathy and exoneration for the executioner. General Tschekin, a Soviet adviser to East Germany, noted that it was a mistake to have adapted Arnold Zweig’s novel for the screen because “the film will have an undesired and deleterious effect on people in the GDR, as it does not depict hatred of fascism, but rather pity for the murderers” (Schenk 1994, 69).
Nine days after the film’s premiere, East German newspapers began printing letters from outraged viewers who shared the officials’ criticism. Shortly thereafter, The Axe of Wandsbek was officially banned. Bertolt Brecht summed up the reasons for the film’s banning at a screening which took place at the Academy of the Arts in 1952: “The butcher appears as a pitiable fellow traveler who gets robbed by apolitical neighbors. It is important to emphasize that there can be no sympathy for a Nazi executioner. Behind the executioner there is a void. There is nothing further to discuss; sympathy must not be aroused through the soulful eye of a good actor.”

The controversy surrounding The Axe of Wandsbek hit Falk Harnack, its director, especially hard. Harnack had been a stanch opponent of the Nazi regime. The film represented the directorial debut for Harnack, and yet was the last production he ever made for East German audiences. During the Second World War, Harnack (1913-1991) narrowly avoided execution for his participation in the renowned Nazi resistance group, the White Rose (Weisse Rose). His brother Arvid, and sister-in-law Mildred, however, were killed because of their involvement in the anti-Nazi activities of the Red Orchestra (Rote Kapelle). Furthermore, Mildred Harnack-Fish, a graduate of the University of Wisconsin and scholar of Goethe, is the only American civilian ever to have been executed on Hitler’s direct orders. On February 16, 1943 she was beheaded at Plצtzensee prison in Berlin for her part in a failed assassination attempt on Hitler’s life. During this time, Falk Harnack had deserted his post in the German army and had joined an antifascist partisan group in Greece. The end of the war brought Harnack back to Germany and back to his career in drama. Despite his steadfast anti-Nazi convictions, Harnack could not save his first film from intense public and official scrutiny. As a result, Harnack left the DEFA studios in 1952, and from then on directed only in the West, where he devoted his work to coming to terms with the past.
Even Arnold Zweig, author of the novel that inspired the film, did not intend under any circumstances for The Axe of Wandsbek to be sympathetic to Nazi murderers. Zweig had been labeled an enemy of the state by the Nazis, and wrote much of his novel while exiled in Palestine during the Second World War (Hermand: 1998, 241). Zweig’s son Adam asserts that his father based the novel on actual events involving a Wandsbek butcher who was hired to execute four Communists condemned to death for protesting a port strike in 1938. Zweig, himself a German-Jew, apparently first encountered the story in a newspaper while in Palestine. The “Bloody Sunday” of July 18, 1932 that took place in Hamburg, might have also contributed to Zweig’s story. On that day, members of the Nazi Storm Troopers marched into Altona, a working-class neighborhood of Hamburg that was home to Communists and Socialists, and provoked a violent clash. Sixteen people were left dead. As in the film, four communists were wrongly convicted over an altercation that killed Nazi Storm Troopers, and subsequently, were executed in 1933 by the Nazis with a hand axe. Zweig explained that the perceived empathy audiences felt for the executioner was a misunderstanding. His intention was to provide humanity to all of his characters, which he hoped would counter the “anti-Germanism” popular among right-wing Zionists in Palestine during the 1940s.
Following the film’s banning, DEFA studios were left with the question of what to do with the movie. Their solution was to remove any scenes that elicited compassion for Teetjen, the executioner. Despite the additional editing, Harnack was refused permission to re-release The Axe of Wandsbek in theaters on the occasion of Arnold Zweig’s 75th birthday in 1962. Ironically, the original version of The Axe of Wandsbek did return to theaters some thirty years after its cinematic debut; the occasion was Erwin Geschonneck’s 75th birthday. Geschonneck played Teetjen, the executioner.

About the Director
Born in 1913, Falk Harnack grew up in Jena and Weimar. From 1937 to 1940 he worked as a director, actor and dramaturge at the German National Theater in Weimar. He was active in the resistance movement against National Socialism which began with his membership in the resistance group “White Rose.” He narrowly escaped being sentenced for his involvement in the group, but his brother and sister-in-law were not so lucky. In 1942 they were executed for their involvement in the resistance group Rote Kapelle (known in English as the “Red Orchestra”) which undoubtedly solidified Harnack’s anti-Nazi stance. After being forced into military service in 1941, he deserted the German army in 1943 and joined an antifascist partisan group in Greece. After the war Harnack returned to his directorial and dramaturgical career in various theatres and began his work with DEFA in1949 as art director.
The Axe of Wandsbek, based on a novel by Arnold Zweig and released in 1951, was his debut as a film director. Initially critics praised the film for what was perceived as a realistic portrayal of the Third Reich, yet a month after its premiere it was banned for what was deemed a sympathetic depiction of a Nazi executioner. As a result Harnack left the East German studio in 1952, and from then on directed only in the West, where he continued to center his work around the topic of coming to terms with the past. In rememberance of Harnack’s work, Gerhard Schoenberner praised it by remarking, “At a time when West German postwar film had sunk to its artistic and political low, his work set new standards for the dictates of commerce and the false glorification of the past that had become fashionable during the Adenauer period as a result of the Cold War.” He died in September of 1991

האם ניטשה אחראי על המוסיקה וגרמניה 19
המבחן – הוצאה להורג- ההצלחה מסוכנת 20
הדגל הנאצי בחיפה 23
תליין עם מסיכה 31
סטינה נבהלת דתית עם התליינות אך מסתגלת 35
יסודות קניבאליים – חזון רצח העצירים בחצר 43
עינויים ולידה מולידים זעקות בבית הסוהר. השומע מנהל ואדיש 46
תקופה של אילתורים – ההצגה עומדת להתחיל 47
הקליפה האנושית של טכניקה ואירגון עומדת להתקלף תבוא מפולת, כעדריות בלונדינית מצפה לעדריות חומה 49
בתקופה של תותחים במקום חמאה לא כדאי להביא ילדים לעולם 56
בנסיעה למקום חדש בחיים חושבים שחוזרים הביתה 68
אבטלה, אינפלציה, רווחי טראסטים 69
שיכרות של פועלים בגלל חוסר יכולת להשתלט ולעשות מהפכה 80
מחנות ריכוז או בריחה אין אפשרות למדינה 81
עורפים למרות שהאינטרס להתחשב עם ארצות הברית בעלת הנפט וההליום המניע צפלינים 85
נוח ובניו חשו שהיבשת אליה הגיעו השתנתה דור אחרי המלחמה 93
חברת האוניות תטיס 103
מחפשים פליז במעבה האדמה בליטא מעבירים ברפסודה 108
רוח התקופה מבלבלת בין התקדמות טכנולוגית וקידמה 114
אוקולטיזם וצבא רציונלי מטה קסם מגלה מתכות 127
המזרח התיכון 151
האל מצמיח ברזל ואבנים אינו רוצה להתערב 167
שיח יהודי : בן קאפיטאליסט ואם של קומוניסט 169
פרויד על שיגעון של שרבר כמודל פסיכוטי של היטלר 178
ציפיות רומנטיות מהיטלר- ראוי לעמוד בירכתיים 181
ההבנה של היטלר מטורף 182
צורך האדם להיגאל- חולמים ולוחמים 183
היהודי עדיין מנוף פוליטי יעיל 184
איש הצבא : בעת מבחן לא יהיו מעצורים 186
מאושרים הגולים שלא שותפים באשמה 197
הזמן מקפיא קרח חדש- האדם לעומתו הססן 204
סר חינה של הרכבת, האטוסטרדות מנצחות. מלחמת העולם הראשונה מלחמת הקטרים הראשונה לעומת 1871 205
עליית האוקולטיזם 208
החזרה הכללית מתקיימת בספרד 209
גאון ההרס – תמונה על החוף 211
האם מותר ואפשר לעצור את הירידה לתהום 213
ניטשה על ברהמס : מלנכוליה של אי יכולת 216
מסע ניצחון של הנאצים – האומות לא מגיבות 224
להיכנס להיסטוריה עם היטלר. רוזבלט רוזנפלד 225
לא דריטה רייך אלא דריק רייך 227
כניסת היטלר לוינה 249
מת הכומר במחנה ריכוז 256
מאמינים כל הזמן שהיטלר ינצח בלי מלחמה 272
עליית היתושים ושגעונם במשטר הנאצי 305
יהודים – אריסטוקרטיה בנפילתה 305
אוםציה לנאצי תוכל לחזור בתשובה אם תבוא לספרד ותבריח שבויים
עימות עם בעל הגרזן 314
ד'ש לפרנקו הקצב 314
עלייה לפלשתינה 319
האסון שנפל על גרמניה עם אסונם של היהודים 319
לרוקח יהודי אסור לתת גלולות שינה לגרמנים 320
רעיון של התאבדות של האשה : בעלי יבוא אחרי 343
פרידה מהמבורג 351
נהר הגיהינום ומי שופכין חומים, האח שב לשם אלקלעי ונלחם ונפל בספרד 353
הסוציאליזם של מארכס הלאים מוסוליני הלאים את ההלאמה 354
פגישה של בני המבורג בחיפה אחרי המלחמה 375
ליל הבדולח , שריפת בתי הכנסת ברחבי גרמניה 375
שיבת הארבעה שנערפו כשמות של אניות סובייטיות 375
העם החף והאשם 378