Radio Messages for Rosa: Installment 7

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Karl Loewy

Vienna, 1933

“Comrade Loewy, your task is to complete your education. I realize that you’re brilliant, probably much more intelligent than me or many of my colleagues, but you have to decide whether your goal in the University is to be admired for that or to get a degree.”

“What do you advise that I do differently?”

“Pick a more or less conventional topic, use documents from archives to demonstrate that you know how to do that, avoid fireworks and political statements. Need I say that this is a matter of Party discipline?”

“I understand.”

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Karl Loewy stopped intervening in seminar discussions and, in general, became as quiet and inconspicuous as he could.? He read Kautsky and Kautsky’s sources in Cornelius’s compilation for his thesis on the Münster Anabaptist rebellion, including the archival source accounts by Kerssenbroick and Gresbeck about the revolt itself, also the Anabaptist pamphlets. He considered in his thesis that it was a nice question whether the Anabaptists were millenarians or utopians, that is, whether they were expecting the Second Coming as imminent and inevitable or were hoping to build an ideal society without supernatural assistance. The question was complicated, he argued, by the absence of a secular vocabulary at that time.? Even if what the Münster Anabaptists had sought was merely a straight-forward political change, they had no choice other than to express that in theological terms. How could they otherwise describe their struggle against feudal oppression, he asked, when any secular alternative to those arrangements was literally unthinkable, unsayable?

It was more this epistemological issue, than the actual events, macabre as they were, that interested him, as it had its parallel in the current political situation in Vienna, indeed, throughout Europe.? Should a Communist, should a Communist party, retain revolutionary purity and avoid compromising with the “social fascists” of the Social Democratic parties, or was it preferable to join with them and others in a Popular Front against the fascists themselves??? This was not quite the same thing, but it had its similarities. The advocates of revolutionary purity occasionally seemed to Karl Loewy to be fervent millenarians without the theology.

Not that he said any of this or included such speculations in the not quite ordinary thesis he submitted, which, after some modifications were made so that it became more ordinary, was accepted. Karl Loewy then applied to the Rockefeller Foundation in New York for a fellowship to do research at Oxford on the minor sects in the English Civil War in order to compare them to similar groups in the Thirty Years War:? Levellers, Diggers, Quakers, Ranters and so forth in England; in the German lands the Anabaptists, with their various affiliates and descendants. The hypotheses that he presented to the Foundation was that a century after the Münster Anabaptist rebellion, and in a less rigid polity, the Levellers were able to conceptualize their criticisms of the existing order and their hopes for the new using a secular vocabulary and that this had political effects. He made no comparisons with contemporary political matters.

The Rockefeller Foundation, as a routine condition of awarding Karl Loewy the fellowship, required assurances that he would have a position to return to at the University of Vienna after his fellowship year in Oxford.? Those assurances were duly given by his Professor, but with the understanding with Karl Loewy himself that he would not return to Vienna.?

Rachel Neuwalder

Vienna, 1934

The University of Vienna had few requirements for the doctorate, only that students pay fees, attend ten lectures a week on any subject, from music to archeology, then present a thesis and take an examination. If the thesis was accepted, and the student passed the examination, a doctorate was awarded. The work on the thesis usually required only a year or a year and a half. The whole effort, from first enrolling in the college after the gymnasium to a doctorate, usually took just four years. In Vienna, in 1934, to those who had them, it seemed that practically everyone had a doctorate.

Rachel Neuwalder noticed that many of her fellow doctoral students nevertheless found it difficult to write a thesis, referring to it as “the” thesis, and closely identifying it with their ego, as she had learned to express such things. She was helped to avoid this, she realized, both by the insights she derived from her analysis and by the discipline she had accepted as a Communist militant.? Her thesis was just a task, for her, not as difficult as learning to encode and transmit radio messages. She chose a clear-cut topic, similar to others she knew Professor Bühler had recently accepted.? It was about the personality types of people who had been born into the working class and had overcome the obstacles inherent in that status sufficiently to have become prominent political leaders.? In order to present her studies as scientifically balanced, she chose examples from both the Anti-Semitic parties and the parties of the Left.? The former, she wrote, were often propelled to important positions by channeling resentment, their own and that of their followers.? The latter were more likely to have what she called group aspirational motivations. She divided the task of working on her thesis into weekly segments, read and wrote, and with the help of Dr. Weitznar quite soon was ready to submit “a” thesis. It wasn’t the best she could do, but she thought it was sufficient.

Dr. Bühler said she was unsure of Rachel Neuwalder’s conclusions, but was impressed, she said, by Rachel’s grasp of her, that is, Dr. Bühler’s, methodology. She congratulated “Dr. Neuwalder” on her University of Vienna doctorate. “Now you are one of us.”

Rachel Neuwalder became Dr. Neuwalder the same week she finished her analysis with Dr. Weitznar.

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Rachel Neuwalder

Vienna, 1934

Soon after receiving her doctorate and finishing her analysis Rachel Neuwalder, Dr. Neuwalder, ?applied to become a candidate in training at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute. Candidates participated in the classes the Institute offered in the evenings. There was, for example, a course on dreams and their interpretation, given by Dr. Isaac Federn, whose full, very black, beard gave him a rabbinical appearance. There were also less formal? meetings of the Psycho-analysis Group, the descendant of the original core of disciples who had gathered around Freud.

Candidates were assigned their first adult patient from the Ambulatorium on Pelikangasse, the outpatient clinic of the Psychoanalytic Institute, on Wollzeile, midway between the Kunsthistorisches museum and the river. While conducting their first analysis candidates were supervised by faculty members of the Institute. Dr. Reinald Friedlander, who had been one of Freud’s earliest followers, became Rachel Neuwalder’s supervisor. He was respected, of course, but Rachel Neuwalder learned from other students that he was considered given to unorthodox opinions, techniques and behaviors, “lacking in scientific objectivity.”? Nonetheless, or therefore, his students were extraordinarily devoted to him.

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Rachel Neuwalder

Vienna, 1934

She went out of the university building, looked up at the familiar low clouds and as the weather was not too bad she continued walking to the H?rlgasse, turning left onto Liechtensteinstrasse.? She then had just three more blocks to walk to Dr. Friedlander’s apartment building.? She went in, walked up the stairs, rang the bell at the door labeled “Dr. R. Friedlander.”? A maid opened the door.

“I’m here to see Dr. Friedlander.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“Yes I do.”

“What is your name?”

“Rachel Neuwalder, Dr. Rachel Neuwalder.”

“He’s expecting you. I’ll show you to his office.”

There was a large modern painting opposite the office door, positioned so as to be the first thing visitors saw when entering the room.? It depicted at a steep angle from the picture plane a naked, emaciated, couple embracing on a narrow bed, staring at the viewer. The office itself was furnished in the modern style: white walls and white bookshelves without moldings; chairs from the Wiener Werkst?tte—all chrome tubes and leather slings—floor lamps suitable for an operating theater. The glass and chrome desk had a leather and chrome office chair behind it. There was nothing on the desk except a reading lamp in the same style, an ashtray and a large open notebook. There was a leather and chrome armchair next to the desk and, nearby, substituting for the traditional couch, a leather and chrome Le Corbusier lounge chair, oriented parallel to the desk. There was a glass coffee table with an ashtray, a bottle of water and a green glass tray of small glasses near the lounge chair. Dr. Friedlander—clean-shaven; balding; wearing rimless glasses and a white garment, a kind of tunic; smiling slightly—was standing behind his desk.

“I had expected a couch covered in Turkish carpets and a shelf of Egyptian statuettes, like the Professor’s.”

“Does this furniture make you uncomfortable?” walking around the desk.? “Have a seat,” gesturing at the armchair.? As she did so he pulled the chair from behind the desk and settled onto it, facing her, leaning forward, his hands on his knees.

“No. It is just unexpected.? It is kind of you to agree to supervise me.”

“It’s my contribution to our work.? And I find that I learn as much, if not more, from these sessions as the apprentice. Why do you wish to become a Psycho-analyst?”

“I found my own analysis helpful. It seems only fair to learn how to pass on those benefits.”

“Helpful in what way?”

“I have learned that the way that I interact with people often has little to do with them or with the present situation, but is a reenactment of interactions I have had with other people.”

“Other people?”

“My parents. That sounds terribly banal.”

“Banal?? Do you mean commonplace?? Why shouldn’t one’s feelings and actions be commonplace? Mine certainly are.? Some men frighten me; some women attract me, and also the opposite: some men attract me, some women frighten me. So it is for millions of men.? That doesn’t make those feelings any less real.”

“Dr. Weitznar told me that Psycho-analysis is a therapy, a medical procedure.”

“Yes, some of us believe that. Dr. Freud himself often puts it that way. For example, it is a therapeutic achievement for the patient to acknowledge the fact that her mother is a real person with a history of her own and that there is more to her than her role as a mother.? And, as you know, the family romance is not limited to the parents and the child.? It can involve siblings.? I had an older brother who, in the manner of younger siblings, I used to follow about.? When I met Freud, certainly the quintessential older brother, I had the same impulse and felt dissatisfied with myself for experiencing it. That transference was the initial ground for our work together. At other times Freud has said that Psycho-analysis is, perhaps is also, a philosophy in the classical mode like Stoicism, having as its goal the right way to live. Looked at in that way its purpose is not, is not only, perhaps, to cure an illness, but also to free one from those psychic dynamics that give rise to irrational dissatisfaction with the way one lives, thinks, and behaves. By bringing those to consciousness and analyzing them one might be able to change, to achieve a better, more satisfying life.”

“I’m not sure that the goal of life is limited in that way.”

“Yes?”

“Shouldn’t it also include attempting to make better, more satisfying lives for others?”

“That is what we try to do, isn’t it? By practicing Psycho-analysis, as Dr. Weitznar told you, as a medical practice.”

“There are other things we can do, aren’t there?? That affect many more people?”

“Possibly. Another way to look at that is that the abstract intellectual discussions and speculations in which young people delight are not necessarily genuine attempts at solving the tasks set by reality. The philosophy of life which they construct—it may be their demand for revolution in the outside world—may be their response to the perception of the new instinctual demands of their own id, which threaten to revolutionize their own lives.”

“If you don’t mind my saying so, that seems to be a kind of nihilism.”

“Interesting. We can talk more about that at a later time. But first, we have a new patient in the clinic whom I believe might be appropriate for your training, whom you may be able to benefit, as you put it.? Can you begin Thursday morning?”

“Yes, I could do that.”

“Good.? I’ll arrange for her to meet you at the clinic at, shall we say 10?? Then you could come here in the afternoon.? This hour is available.”

?#historicalfiction #spies #psycho-analysis #1930s #Vienna

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