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LOU ANDREAS-SALOMÉ

(1937)

On February 5 of this year Frau Lou Andreas-Salomé died peacefully in her little house at Göttingen, almost 76 years of age. For the last 25 years of her life this remarkable woman was attached to psycho-analysis, to which she contributed valuable writings and which she practised as well. I am not saying too much if I acknowledge that we all felt it as an honour when she joined the ranks of our collaborators and comrades in arms, and at the same time as a fresh guarantee of the truth of the theories of analysis.

It was known that as a girl she had kept up an intense friendship with Friedrich Nietzsche, founded upon her deep understanding of the philosopher’s bold ideas. This relationship came to an abrupt end when she refused the proposal of marriage which he made her. It was well known, too, that many years later she had acted alike as Muse and protecting mother to Rainer Maria Rilke, the great poet, who was a little helpless in facing life. But beyond this her personality remained obscure. Her modesty and discretion were more than ordinary. She never spoke of her own poetical and literary works. She clearly knew where the true values in life are to be looked for. Those who were closer to her had the strongest impression of the genuineness and harmony of her nature and could discover with astonishment that all feminine frailties, and perhaps most human frailties, were foreign to her or had been conquered by her in the course of her life.

It was in Vienna that long ago the most moving episode of her feminine fortunes had been played out. In 1912 she returned to Vienna in order to be initiated into psycho-analysis. My daughter, who was her close friend, once heard her regret that she had not known psycho-analysis in her youth. But, after all, in those days there was no such thing.

Sigm. Freud

February, 1937.