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Berlin Psychoanalytic
Weimar and Now: German Cultural Criticism
Edward Dimendberg, Martin Jay, and Anton Kaes, General Editors
Berlin Psychoanalytic
Psychoanalysis and Culture in Weimar
Republic Germany and Beyond

Veronika Fuechtner

university of california press

Berkeley╇╇• ╇ Los Angeles╇╇ •â•‡â•‡London
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University of California Press, Ltd.

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© 2011 by The Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fuechtner, Veronika, 1969–

â•… Berlin Psychoanalytic : psychoanalysis and culture
in Weimar Republic Germany and beyond / Veronika
Fuechtner.
â•…â•…p.â•…â•…cm. — (Weimar and now : German cultural
criticism ; 43)
â•… Includes bibliographical references and index.
â•… ISBN 978-0-520-25837-2 (cloth : acid-free paper)
â•… 1. Psychoanalysis and culture—Germany—History—
20th century.â•… 2. Berliner Psychoanalytisches Institut—
History—20th century.â•… 3. Berliner Psychoanalytisches
Institut—Influence.â•… 4. Psychoanalysis and culture—Pal-
estine—History—20th century.â•… 5. Psychoanalysis and
culture—New York (State)—New York—History—20th
century.â•… 6. Psychoanalysts—Germany—Berlin—Biogra-
phy.â•… 7. Authors, German—Germany—Berlin—Biogra-
phy.â•… 8. Artists—Germany—Berlin—Biography.â•…
9. Berlin (Germany)—Intellectual life—20th cen-
tury.â•… 10. Modernism (Aesthetics)—Germany—Berlin—
History—20th century.â•… I. Title.
â•… BF175.4.C84F89 2011
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Manufactured in the United States of America

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For Nikhil
Contents

List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xi

Introduction 1

1. Berlin Soulscapes: Alfred Döblin Talks to

Ernst Simmel 18

2. Wild Psychoanalysis, Religion, and Race:

Georg Groddeck Talks to Count Hermann
von Keyserling (among Others) 65

3. The Berlin Psychoanalytic in Palestine:

Arnold Zweig Talks to Max Eitingon 113

4. Berlin Dada and Psychoanalysis in New York:

Richard Huelsenbeck and Charles Hulbeck
Talk to Karen Horney 144

Conclusion 175

Notes 181
Selected Bibliography 211
Index 227
Illustrations

1. War trauma in Jason Lutes, Berlin: City of Stones (2001)╇ /╇ 4

2. Alfred Döblin, patient book entry (1924)╇ /╇ 24
3. Alfred Döblin in his office with his wife, Erna Döblin,
posing as his patient (1928)╇ /╇ 25
4. Illustration from Alfred Döblin, Two Girlfriends
Commit Murder (1924)╇/╇54
5. The psychoanalytic congress in Bad Homburg, 1925╇ /╇ 79
6. Félicien Rops, Sacrifice and Idole (1882)╇ /╇ 86
7. Scene from Secrets of a Soul (G.╛W. Pabst, 1926)╇ /╇ 119
8. Members of the Göring Institute (1941)╇ /╇ 124
9. Richard Huelsenbeck in 8 × 8: A Chess Sonata
in 8 Movements (Hans Richter, 1957)╇ /╇ 165

ix
Acknowledgments

The research for this book was made possible by grants from the
SSRC, the NEH, the ACLS, the American Psychoanalytic Association,
the Deutsche Schillergesellschaft, the University of Chicago, and Dart-
mouth College.
Eric Santner, Katie Trumpener, and Robert Pippin were wonderful
mentors in the initial stages of this book, when it was still all about
Döblin. They helped me see beyond. I would have never set out to write
this book had it not been for Sander Gilman, who years ago got me
interested in Karl Abraham’s works, and whose generous support and
intellectual vision were vital to the project throughout.
The members of the Berlin Forum for the History of Psychoanalysis
were an important resource for me—discussions with them helped me
shape the book at crucial junctures. I owe many thanks to Lilli Gast, Ulrike
May, and Michael Schröter, but especially to Regine Lockot and Thomas
Müller. The first forum member I met was Ludger Hermanns. He opened
many doors for me, and I am deeply indebted to him for his continu-
ous, amiable support and the many references he shared with me. Rainer
Herrn and Ralf Dose from the Magnus-Hirschfeld-Gesellschaft helped
me see my research on psychoanalysis as part of larger developments in
scientific debates on sexuality. Several scholars of the Döblin society were
important interlocutors in the initial stages, especially Anthony Riley. I
am grateful to Bodo Kunke and Adam Zweig for talking to me about
their family histories and giving life to some of my source material.

xi
xii╇╇|╇╇Acknowledgments

I thank the many archivists and librarians who gave me generous

access to their sources, but especially Ute Doster, Sanford Gifford,
Maren Horn, Jochen Meyer, Reinhart Sonnenburg, Nellie Thompson,
and Miguel Valladares. The Staatsbibliothek Berlin kindly provided me
with a writing booth.
I am lucky to be part of such a collegial, supportive, and intellectually
stimulating department as the Dartmouth Department of German Stud-
ies. I am grateful to my colleagues and friends there and in the larger
Dartmouth community. In particular, Colleen Boggs, Gerd Gemünden,
Susannah Heschel, Irene Kacandes, Klaus Milich, Angela Rosenthal,
Paula Sprague, Kate Thomas, and Melissa Zeiger gave support or feed-
back at crucial points. Bruce Duncan spent many hours gently editing
my English and providing good-humored, no-nonsense commentary.
The editing and bibliographic work of Shekhar Krishnan and of my for-
mer students Jessica Spradling and Bernadette Peters was invaluable to
this project. Many thanks also to Tony Kaes, and the editors and staff at
the University of California Press for their support along the way.
Discussions with Darcy Buerkle, Mara Heifetz, and Paul Lerner were
crucial to the writing process. My anonymous tenure and manuscript
readers took a lot of time and trouble to give me generous and detailed
feedback, which was vital for the revisions. Among many others, Chris-
tina von Braun, Shailesh Kapadia, Nathan Kravis, George Makari, Mai
Wegener, and Barbara Stimmel provided me with important opportuni-
ties to discuss my work with a larger audience and gain new insights in
the process. Conversations with many other analysts and scholars shaped
this project. In particular, the discussions at the German Film Institutes
2004 and 2006—“Unknown Weimar”—and at the Berlin Program for
Advanced German and European Studies, 2004–2005, were pivotal to
my thinking about this book within a wider framework. The Berlin Pro-
gram coordinator, Karin Goihl, was of great help in many instances.
I also thank my dear friends who never got tired of hearing about
this book. A special thank-you to Bo-Mi Choi, Ora Gelley, Ted Hardin,
Anja Hellenbrecht, Andrew King, Philip Krippendorff, Annika Krump,
Sascha Lehnartz, Vreni Naess, Cristina Nord, Manuel Rota, Daniela
Siebert, Nora Stoppino, Eve Tselepatiotis, Joe Winston, and Sabra Zahn.
Lisa Fittko (1909–2005) inspired me. My family, especially Jehô and
Hans Füchtner; Valeria, Hendrik, and Bruno Knopp; Kamala and Rag-
hunatha Rao; and Helma Möckelmann and Kurt Füchtner, supported
and encouraged me over the years. This book is dedicated to Nikhil Rao,
whose steady love, optimism, and patience carried me all the way.
Introduction

What Is the Berlin Psychoanalytic?

This book recovers the vibrant cultural and intellectual history of the
Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute (BPI) in the years between the end of
World War I and the rise of the Third Reich and traces the BPI’s world-
wide impact on culture and psychoanalysis through its later develop-
ment in 1940s Palestine and 1950s New York. It argues that Weimar
Republic culture is inseparable from the psychoanalytic discourse on
war neurosis, sexuality, and criminality specific to Berlin, and it con-
nects paradigmatic movements, forms, and themes of Berlin modern-
ism, such as Dada, multiperspectivity, and the urban experience, with
the understanding of the psychoanalysis that was theorized and prac-
ticed at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute. In four case studies, I pair
writers and psychoanalysts whose correspondence exemplifies the
interplay between theoretical discussion and cultural production that
is distinctive to the psychoanalytic culture and context of Weimar Ber-
lin, including the narration of war trauma, conceptions of gender, the
psychoanalytic theorization of race and anti-Semitism, and the various
commingling interpretations of psychoanalysis as a philosophy, a politi-
cal mission, and part of the cultural avant-garde. I also claim the Berlin
Psychoanalytic to be a crucial historical and theoretical moment in the
development of Frankfurt School theory and for the development of
psychoanalytic thought beyond Freud.

1
2╇╇|╇╇Introduction

Clearly, the term Berlin Psychoanalytic itself warrants an explana-

tion beyond the grammatical. It evokes the postwar American shorthand
for psychoanalytic institutes as in “the New York Psychoanalytic” and
thus anchors the term to the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute as its point
of departure. But with the adjective psychoanalytic I intend to convey
that this book addresses not only “psychoanalysis” but also a particular
interdisciplinary network of intellectuals that included psychoanalysts,
psychiatrists, sexual scientists, writers, artists, journalists, and figures
who would have described themselves as all of the above—something
that was not uncommon in 1920s Berlin. And it is the Berlin Psychoan-
alytic rather than the Psychoanalytic Berlin because I will make the case
that this intellectual network is different from similar contemporary
intellectual networks in other European cities, such as Vienna and Lon-
don, and that the specific historical and intellectual situation of Weimar
Berlin determined the theoretical synergy of this network. Moreover, as
I will elaborate in the coming chapters, the Berlin Psychoanalytic is not
a location (like Psychoanalytic Berlin) but a cultural practice that goes
beyond the geographical and historical limits of Weimar Berlin. The
Berlin Psychoanalytic thus honors the tension in psychoanalytic theory
between, on the one hand, universality across time and space, and, on
the other, change and adaptation specific to external circumstances.
The Berlin Psychoanalytic denotes a specific relationship between
psychoanalysis and culture. This sort of relationship is familiar to us
from the context of the Viennese fin de siècle, the London Blooms-
bury group, and surrealist Paris. Berlin, however, has been strangely
absent from the canonical narrative of psychoanalytic modernism. The
moment that I call the Berlin Psychoanalytic produced mixed-genre
works such as the literary psychoanalytic case study Two Girlfriends
Commit Murder (1924), by Alfred Döblin, and the didactic crime film
on psychoanalysis Secrets of a Soul (1926), by G.â•›W. Pabst. As part of
the Berlin Psychoanalytic we see psychoanalysts involved in the popu-
larization of psychoanalysis through film, literature, and journalism.
We see them simultaneously involved in collaboration with other path-
breaking institutions such as Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual
Science and the Association of Socialist Physicians. We also see artists
involved in the institute shaping the psychoanalytic discourse side by
side with clinicians. In Weimar Berlin, psychoanalysis was considered
not only a new clinical theory but also a political mission and part of
a cultural avant-garde. The Berlin Psychoanalytic offers a reminder of
an unusual instance of conjunction between the sciences and the arts,
 Introduction╇╇|╇╇3

when psychoanalytic journals reviewed novels and novelists reviewed

psychoanalytic congresses.

Weimar, Mon Amour?

Weimar Republic Berlin is frequently described as the site of a “relent-
lessly self-renewing modernity.”1 The dynamic nature of Berlin in the
1920s, along with our retrospective knowledge that these years represent
the last productive moment of German Jewish culture before the Holo-
caust, creates the danger of—as Peter Gay puts it—“sentimentalizing
or sensationalizing” Weimar Republic culture.2 With our knowledge of
the devastation looming on the horizon, the dream of Weimar Berlin
as a site of a “nostalgic counterculture” is powerful and continues to
influence its literary and scholarly representations in the United States and
Europe today.3
Jason Lutes’s 2001 cartoon novel about Berlin in the 1920s, Berlin:
City of Stones, is a recent example of the collective imaginary of the sec-
ondary literature on Weimar Berlin that is available to U.S. audiences.
Lutes’s book references famous historical images and canonical Berlin
films, such as Wim Wenders’s Wings of Desire (1987), and picks up on
themes such as inflation, political radicalization, the emergence of the
New Woman, the beginnings of the gay rights movement, the contra-
dictions of Jewish assimilation, urban consumerism, mass media, art
movements such as New Subjectivity, and more to create a lost, at times
violent, yet almost utopian site of cultural and political experimentation.
This kind of popular idealization of Weimar has been seriously chal-
lenged by scholarship on several fronts. First, it has been challenged
with the argument that Weimar Republic modernism encompassed
ideo�
logical contradictions and, in certain instances, embraced ideas
that would not be perceived as progressive by today’s definition. As
Weimar scholars Jost Hermand and Frank Trommler pointed out in the
late 1980s, “the progressive heritage of this era was not spared” by its
political and cultural contradictions.4 In her most recent work on the
pioneering sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, the historian Atina Gross-
mann describes the progression of an entire generation of scholars from
euphoria to a more pessimistic and differentiated stance, for example in
regard to the impact of the discourse of race and eugenics surrounding
the Institute for Sexual Science (ISS).5 To a similar end, the historian
Jeffrey Herff coined the term reactionary modernism for the integra-
tion of an avant-garde relationship to technology into an antimodernist
Figure 1. War trauma in Jason Lutes, Berlin: City of Stones (2001). Courtesy of
Jason Lutes.
 Introduction╇╇|╇╇5

romantic nationalism that continued to inform cultural and intellectual

life in the Third Reich.
The emergence of psychoanalysis is closely connected to the cultural
history of modernism. Its development reflects the complex relationship
between modernism and fascism, not only in its moments of uprooting,
disruption, and transformation in exile, but also in its strands of conti-
nuity and transformation under the Third Reich. Constructions of race
and fantasies about Jews that populated the German imaginary well
before 1933 also found their expression in the psychoanalytic move-
ment. As I will elaborate, many figures involved in the movement, such
as Georg Groddeck, defy categorization within today’s political spec-
trum of progressive/conservative or left/right. In Groddeck’s case, he
was one of many psychoanalysts who subscribed at least in part to the
eugenic and racial discourse of the early twentieth century. And while
the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute was a center for leftist psychoanaly�
tic thought, we need to remember that psychoanalysts such as Carl
Müller-Braunschweig, Felix Boehm, and Harald Schultz-Hencke con-
tinued their careers successfully during the Third Reich. In these cases,
the “progressive” emphasis on the individual’s contribution to society
could lead to a scenario in which psychoanalysts were able sell their
discipline to the National Socialists as a booster of social productiv-
ity.6 Finally, despite its progressive and inclusive atmosphere, the Ber-
lin Psychoanalytic Institute was also an institution that contested lay
analysis early on and that engineered the ultimate clinical orientation
of psychoanalysis.
A second challenge to engaging with the complex history of Weimar
Berlin is to escape the teleology of fascism that informs the analysis of
continuities between Weimar Republic modernism and the Third Reich,
most famously present in Siegfried Kracauer’s seminal work on the Wei-
mar Republic film From Caligari to Hitler. Recent works such as Anton
Kaes’s book on Fritz Lang’s film M have pursued Weimar Berlin’s past,
rather than its future, and have emphasized the social and psychologi-
cal impact of World War I rather than the inevitability of World War
II. And after the reunification of the two Germanys in 1990, the past
“moved closer to the present” as the newly fashioned “Berlin Republic”
began to look on Weimar Berlin, rather than the West German state, as
an immediate precursor for a unified German democracy.7
In regard to the history of psychoanalysis, we find contradictory nar-
ratives that proclaim the survival of psychoanalysis in the Third Reich
and others that proclaim the disruption and death of psychoanalysis in
6╇╇|╇╇Introduction

Germany under the National Socialists. We also find teleological mod-

els on both sides, for example in Arnold Zweig’s idea that the psycho-
analytic dissent of Harald Schultz-Hencke led directly to the politics of
the Göring Institute. While I am aware of all these challenges, I strive in
this book to maintain some of the original excitement for what Anton
Kaes, Martin Jay, and Edward Dimendberg have termed the “labora-
tory of modernity.”8
The Berlin Psychoanalytic conceptualizes a field that extends well
beyond the four case studies I present. Though clusters of this field
have been engaged productively, such as the intellectual impact of Otto
Gross’s work or the Pabst film Secrets of a Soul, the field is vast and
includes works by psychoanalyst-writers such as Lou Andreas-Salomé,
Hanns Sachs, Theodor Reik, and Alexander Mette, to name but a few,
who are only supporting players in this book. It remains to be deter-
mined exactly how figures who have become the lenses of contemporary
readings of Weimar culture—such as Walter Benjamin, whose brother
was an active member of the Association of Socialist Physicians; Käthe
Kollwitz, whose husband was one of the association’s cofounders; and
Else Lasker-Schüler, who commented on Magnus Hirschfeld’s sexologi-
cal work—were connected to this network of medicine, sexology, and
psychoanalysis. While this book focuses primarily on literary figures,
artists working in other media factor in to the Berlin Psychoanalytic: the
artist Alfred Kubin, who was analyzed by Abraham; and Lucie Jessner,
the wife of the theater director Fritz Jessner (brother of Leopold), who
trained as an analyst at the BPI. Thinking about the convergence of
these realms in terms of geographic locations such as the Romanisches
Café, or in terms of publications such as the Vossische Zeitung, could
also be a productive approach.
Many scholars have attempted to broaden the field of Weimar
Republic studies by emphasizing the aesthetic and ideological con-
tinuities between Weimar culture in general and specific elements of
popular culture, such as advertising and crime fiction, in an effort to
challenge the image of Weimar’s as high art or “outsider” culture. I am
indebted to this work, and to the work in intellectual history that con-
ceives of Weimar culture as connected to discussions and developments
in the social and natural sciences, such as sexology, anthropology, and
psychiatry. Literary criticism of canonical authors like Alfred Döblin
and Richard Huelsenbeck tends to exclude their medical writings and
therapeutic practice, thereby separating their applied psychology from
their fictional representations of psychology. This separation has led
 Introduction╇╇|╇╇7

to understandings of their modernism that de-emphasize the pragmatic

politics, socialist commitment, and theoretical sophistication of their
medical work. Similarly, psychoanalysts such as Groddeck have rarely
been looked at through a literary lens as modernist writers.
While my first chapter traces a specific intellectual agenda through
Döblin’s editing process, I do not subscribe to an interpretation based
exclusively on author intent. As his novel Berlin Alexanderplatz makes
clear, texts are more multifaceted and complicated than their authors
could ever mean them to be. Not to mention the author’s unconscious,
as the literary scholar Maria Tatar established through her argument that
Döblin’s recognition of social pathology in regard to gender did not pre-
vent the presence of exculpatory “fables of female violence” in his text.9
When I began work on this book, I was surprised by how little lit-
erature is available about the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute during the
years of the Weimar Republic. Relatively little has been written about
its history, its theoretical context, and its analysts in either German
or English scholarship. I also wondered why the historical influence of
the BPI did not figure more prominently in the self-conception of Ameri-
can psychoanalysis today. After all, many of the most important theo-
rists who influenced the development of psychoanalytic thought in the
United States originally were trained and worked at the BPI, rather than
in Freud’s Vienna. Additionally, most American psychoanalytic insti-
tutes were jump-started by or received at least a significant boost from
the Berlin émigrés of the 1930s. The current genealogy of psychoanalysis
always leads back to Vienna, and this unidirectional genealogy needs to
be reconsidered.
One of my first interviews for this book was with the German ana-
lyst and scholar Johannes Cremerius (1918–2002), who argued that,
within the history of Freudian psychoanalysis, Berlin was the origin of
dissent. Indeed, many analysts who later broke with Freud, including
Melanie Klein, Karen Horney, and Erich Fromm, were trained in Ber-
lin. Wilhelm Reich spent important and productive years there. Beyond
Cremerius’s argument, another factor is the fraught history of the inte-
gration of Freudian psychoanalysts into the National Socialist Göring
Institute, which was not publicly acknowledged by the German psy-
choanalytic community until the occasion of the first German Interna-
tional Psychoanalytic Association (IPA) congress since the Third Reich,
in Hamburg in 1985.10
While both psychoanalytic journals and scholarly studies now fre-
quently discuss German psychoanalysis before and during the Third
8╇╇|╇╇Introduction

Reich, there is still no historically comprehensive book-length criti-

cal intellectual study of the BPI in German or English. Since my book
addresses the history of the Berlin Psychoanalytic, which is closely tied
to this institutional history, I will sketch out a brief basic account.

The Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute

After meeting Sigmund Freud in Vienna, the psychiatrist Karl Abra-
ham set out for Berlin in 1907 to make his living as the first German
psychoanalyst. In August 1908, Abraham wrote to Freud: “Things are
moving! On the 27th the Berlin Psycho-Analytic Society will meet for
the first time. For the time being, the following gentlemen (all of them
physicians) will take part: Hirschfeld, Iwan Bloch, Juliusburger, and
Koerber (Chairman of the Monistenbund [Monistic Alliance]). I believe
others will soon join in. Dr Juliusburger in particular is very keen; he is
Oberarzt [senior staff physician] in a private institution and is introduc-
ing psychoanalysis in spite of his superior’s opposition.”11 The list of
attendees at this first gathering indicates the close connection between
sexology and psychoanalysis in their mutual beginnings as highly con-
tested new disciplines that grew out of psychiatry. Before World War I,
psychoanalysis and sexology grew apart, with psychoanalysis focusing
more on the psychological and sexology focusing more on the somatic
manifestations of sexuality. However, they still can be described as
“twin sciences,” since their development continues showing parallels in
many aspects, from their push toward creating international networks
to their internal secession movements.
The early history of the BPI is also linked closely to Berlin’s main
psychiatric institutions, Charité, the Lankwitz Hospital, and the Urban
Hospital, where many psychoanalysts trained and worked alongside
sexologists like Heinrich Koerber, Otto Juliusburger, or Iwan Bloch,
who were initially part of Abraham’s psychoanalytic circle.12 Eugen
Bleuler’s Zurich clinic, Burghölzli, where Abraham and Huelsenbeck
worked before coming to Berlin, is another important institutional and
theoretical source. However, as Hannah Decker and others have shown,
psychoanalysis in Germany largely struggled against the prejudices and
institutional boundaries of university psychiatry before World War I.13
The hunch that Abraham expressed in his letter to Freud was cor-
rect: what started out as a small discussion group of interested psy-
chiatrists became the first psychoanalytic institute in Germany and
the first German affiliate of the IPA. As one of the few historians of
 Introduction╇╇|╇╇9

psychoanalysis who provides a detailed overview of the theoretical and

institutional development of the BPI, George Makari has described how
Berlin very quickly became the “third hub” for psychoanalysis, next to
Vienna and Zurich, and how, after Otto Rank’s and Sándor Ferenczi’s
failed reform attempts in Vienna, the power to innovate psychoanalysis
shifted to Berlin.14 The BPI’s organizational structure and curriculum
for analytical training became the model for psychoanalytic institutes
worldwide, especially in the United States, where Berlin psychoanalysts
who emigrated in the early 1930s sought to restructure the existing U.S.
institutes that they joined on the tripartite Berlin model of education,
research, and polyclinic.
In 1910, the still-small Berlin group was recognized by the Interna-
tional Psychoanalytic Association. During World War I, most of these
early Berlin analysts worked as military doctors on the eastern front,
including Max Eitingon, a Russian analyst and later director of the BPI
who had joined Abraham’s group in 1909. Their successes with the
psychoanalytic treatment of war neurosis gave the movement a boost
of recognition. According to Abraham, Berlin was now “clamoring for
psychoanalysis.”15 On February 16, 1920, the Berlin psychoanalytic
polyclinic opened with a flourish of modern art, including performances
of art songs by Schönberg and Wolff and readings of Morgenstern
poems. Ernst Simmel recited Rilke’s “Insanity” and read from short
stories by Oscar A. H. Schmitz, an Abraham analysand and writer, who
later analyzed Hermann von Keyserling.16 Karl Abraham mused about
“the rise of the polyclinic out of the unconscious.” The polyclinic of the
BPI, which was financed by Eitingon and maintained by contributions
from its own analysts, served as a psychoanalytic training facility and
provided free treatment to a low-income population.
As the historian Otto Friedrich describes it, the opening of the insti-
tute on March 13, 1920, coincided with the turmoil of the Kapp Putsch,
the emerging fascist movement’s first defining demonstration of power
in Berlin. Just thirteen years later, many psychoanalysts would be forced
into exile by the National Socialists, and some would be murdered.
Friedrich describes Abraham’s opening lecture at the opening of the BPI
as follows:

On the first day of the Kapp Putsch, in the middle of the general strike, a
small group of enthusiasts gathered in a building on the Spichernstrasse to
hear a lecture. The lecturer was Karl Abraham, a coolly self-contained man
of forty-three, with closely cropped hair and a thick mustache, and though
he had no explanation for the madness taking place in the streets of Berlin,
10╇╇|╇╇Introduction

he did outline a new theory to explain the basic causes for irrational behav-
ior. His talk was entitled “Elements of Psychoanalysis,” and Abraham, the
first practicing psychoanalyst in Germany, was delivering the first lecture at
the newly opened Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute.17

This seemingly coincidental convergence of psychoanalysis and poli-

tics remained a leitmotif for the Berlin Institute, which became a cen-
ter for progressive psychoanalytic thought that attracted in particular
the younger generation of psychoanalysts, who felt, as Wilhelm Reich
stated, that they could “breathe more freely” in Berlin.18 However, not
all BPI analysts were leftists, and Reich’s and Simmel’s politics did not
necessarily translate into institutional politics. In fact, Reich’s com-
munist politics ultimately conflicted with the institutional politics of
the BPI. Besides Reich, who was the founder of the Sexpol movement,
the Berlin Institute attracted and trained figures such as Otto Fenichel,
who later authored leftist emigration circulars; the Freud translators
James and Alix Strachey; the writer-analyst Lou Andreas-Salomé; the
theoretician of psychoanalytic pedagogy Siegfried Bernfeld; and the
pioneering child analyst Paula Heimann.19 Many of the analysts who
received their training in Berlin went on to develop their own schools,
including Melanie Klein, who deeply influenced British psychoanalysis
and the field of child psychoanalysis; Karen Horney, who defined the
field of female psychology in the United States; and Erich Fromm, who
became a prominent figure in Frankfurt School theory and American
ego-psychology.
Until his sudden death in 1926, Abraham was the leading theorist of
the institute; and Max Eitingon was its financial backer, as well as its
main administrator, until 1933. The lead training analysts were Sim-
mel and the lay analyst Hanns Sachs, who was brought in from Vienna
after World War I. The institute benefited from a continuous influx of
Hungarian analysts like Sándor Radó and Franz Alexander, Russian
analysts like Moshe Wulff and Anna Smeliansky, and Viennese analysts
like Theodor Reik and Wilhelm Reich.
The BPI also had a formative influence on the intellectual life of the
Frankfurt Psychoanalytic Institute (FPI), the second German psychoana-
lytic institute, founded in 1929 by the Freud analysand Karl Landauer.
Many of its members were trained by Berlin analysts such as Heinrich
Meng, Erich Fromm, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, and Clara Happel. The
FPI shared rooms, staff, and students with the Institute for Social Research
and was a crucial initial catalyst for Max Horkheimer’s and Theodor
Adorno’s development of critical theory. Many of the FPI analysts were
 Introduction╇╇|╇╇11

able to emigrate to the United States or Switzerland to escape Nazi per-

secution, but Landauer was arrested in Holland, and he died in January
1945 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp while trying to provide
psychotherapeutic treatment to other inmates as long as he could.20
Among the traits that rendered the Berlin Institute unique in its time
were its emphasis on the political and social implications of psycho�
analysis, its application of psychoanalysis to fields such as law, peda-
gogy, and medicine (the institute ran professional seminars for lawyers,
doctors, and priests), its desire to reach beyond the traditional bour-
geois clientele with its polyclinic, and its strategy to popularize psy-
choanalysis through mass media. Hanns Sachs’s Psychoanalytic Love
Rules (1920), G.â•›W. Pabst’s film Secrets of a Soul (1926), and Paul Fed-
ern and Heinrich Meng’s Popular Psychoanalytic Handbook (1928)
are examples of this strategy, as well as of the institute’s “open door”
policy. The psychoanalyst Martin Grotjahn described the atmosphere
of the BPI as very informal: “There was no official enrollment. Evening
lectures were free to everyone who wanted to attend.” The BPI repre-
sented only one of many psychotherapeutic schools that flourished and
interacted at that time in Berlin; others included Adlerian psychoanalysis,
Gestalt psychology, and early versions of dance and art therapy.21 Many
BPI psychoanalysts, like Ernst Simmel, Georg Groddeck, Karen Horney,
Wilhelm Reich, and Harald Schultz-Hencke, were also active in the Gen-
eral Medical Society for Psychotherapy (Allgemeine Ärztliche Gesellschaft
für Psychotherapie) and thus exchanged ideas with psychiatrists, sexolo-
gists, and psychotherapists of other schools.22
A heightened awareness of and interest in the surrounding social
conditions of Berlin after World War I was expressed not only in
theoretical works of this time. In some cases, analysts’ commitments
to social change translated into cross-memberships in other organiza-
tions or groups. By 1926, Ernst Simmel was simultaneously head of
the German Psychoanalytic Society (DPG) and of the Association of
Socialist Physicians (VSÄ). The so-called Kinderseminar was another
important forum, where the political implications of psychoanalysis for
leftist theory were debated. It had been initiated by Otto Fenichel, and
it included other members of the second generation of psychoanalysts,
such as Edith Jacobson, Wilhelm and Annie Reich, and the Bornstein
sisters.23 Helene Stöcker, temporarily a member in the early days of
the institute, was at the forefront of the Weimar Republic Women’s
Movement and remained connected with the institute throughout the
1920s. The many overlapping members of the BPI and the Institute
12╇╇|╇╇Introduction

for Sexual Science included the psychoanalysts Hanns Sachs and Carl
Müller-Braunschweig, who also lectured at the ISS, and the ISS founder
Magnus Hirschfeld, an early member of Abraham’s reading circle that
became the BPI. Through this network of institutions and personal affil-
iations, the institute participated in larger social debates, such as that
on homosexuality, and, as I will elaborate, the institute’s work was also
perceived by other groups as part of a larger cultural network.
At the same time, psychoanalysis also became a fashionable topic for
novels, poems, and films. In 1925, Sachs and Abraham wrote in a joint
letter to Freud’s inner circle in Vienna, London, and Budapest: “We can
report from Germany that the discussion of psychoanalysis in newspa-
pers and magazines doesn’t rest. One finds it mentioned everywhere. Of
course there is no lack of attacks. But without doubt the interest was
never as strong as now.”24 In Yvan Goll’s novel Sodom Berlin (1929),
Nora Finkelstein, the wife of a wealthy real estate agent, starts an affair
with her psychoanalyst, who falls for her because of her resemblance to
his mother. Goll’s biting commentary about the psychoanalysis craze:
“As the new world religion psychoanalysis solemnly preached a lofty
amorality. Everybody had the right, if not the duty, to investigate their
own Ego, to pamper it like a rare flower and to find the reasons for any
accident or discontent in the blind innocence of their own childhood, if
not in the mother’s breast.”25 The poet Erich Mühsam, who was part
of Otto Gross’s circle, poked fun at the “soul distorters.” These “ghost
whisperers” seek to explore the straight and crooked pathways of our
minds and, after removing our inhibitions, just might end up getting
kicked around themselves.26
In 1923, the German-American Film Union produced The Movie
of the Unconscious, an educational feature that laid out the structure
of the nervous system along with the concept of the unconscious and
the mechanism of repression (it was developed by the neurologist Curt
Thomalla and the sexologist and Hirschfeld collaborator Arthur Kro-
nfeld).27 The film was viewed with great skepticism by institutionalized
psychoanalysis. The Berliners started to argue that, in order to control
the public image of psychoanalysis, one had to get involved in this movie
business. The abundance of what they perceived as misrepresentations
of psychoanalytic theory in popular culture ultimately influenced what
I previously described as the strategy of popularization.
In early 1933, the BPI began a period of largely self-imposed align-
ment with national socialist policy (Gleichschaltung), which in the
 Another Random Document on
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791. Two gentlemen, the other day, conversing together, one asked
the other, if ever he had gone through Euclid. The reply was, I have
never been farther from Liverpool than Runcon, and I don’t recollect
any place of that name.
792. Lady Rachel is put to bed, said Sir Boyle to a friend. What has
she got? Guess. A boy? No; guess again. A girl? Who told you?
793. The wife of a Scotch laird being suddenly taken very ill, the
husband ordered the servant to get a horse ready to go to the next
town to the doctor; by the time, however, the horse was ready, and
his letter to the doctor written, the lady recovered, on which he
added the following postcript, and sent off the messenger: My wife
being recovered, you need not come.
794. In a company, consisting of naval officers, the discourse
happened to turn on the ferocity of small animals; when an Irish
gentleman present stated his opinion to be, that a Kilkenny cat, of all
animals, was the most ferocious; and added, I can prove my
assertion by a fact within my own knowledge: I once, said he, saw
two of these animals fighting in a timber yard, and willing to see the
result of a long battle, I drove them into a deep saw-pit, and placing
some boards over the mouth, left them to their amusement. Next
morning I went to see the conclusion of the fight, and what d’ye
think I saw? One of the cats dead probably, replied one of the
company. No, by St. Patrick, there was nothing left in the pit but the
two tails, and a bit of flue.
795. Dr. Wall, at a public dinner, was playing with a cork upon the
table. What a dirty hand Dr. W. has, said Mr. E. I will bet you a bottle
there is a dirtier in company, said the doctor, who had overheard.
Done. Upon which he produced his other hand, and won the wager.
796. Dr. Ratcliffe being in a tavern one evening, a gentleman
entered in great haste, almost speechless: Doctor, my wife is at the
point of death, make haste, come with me. Not till I have finished
my bottle, however, replied the doctor. The man, who happened to
be a fine athletic fellow, finding entreaty useless, snatched up the
doctor, hoisted him on his back, and carried him out of the tavern;
the moment he set the doctor upon his legs, he received from him,
in a very emphatic manner, the following threat: Now, you rascal, I’ll
cure your wife in spite of you.
797. A little girl, who knew very well the painful anxiety which her
mother had long suffered, during a tedious course of litigation,
hearing that she had at last lost her law-suit, innocently cried out, O,
my dear mama! how glad I am that you have lost that nasty law-
suit, which used to give you so much trouble and uneasiness.
798. A gentleman, who possessed a small estate in Gloucestershire,
was allured to town by the promises of a courtier, who kept him in
constant attendance for a long while to no purpose; at last the
gentleman, quite tired out, called upon his pretended friend, and
told him that he had at last got a place. The courtier shook him very
heartily by the hand, and said he was very much rejoiced at the
event: But pray, sir, said he, where is your place? In the Gloucester
coach, replied the other; I secured it last night; and so good-bye to
you.
799. Mr. Rogers was requested by Lady Holland to ask Sir Philip
Francis, whether he was the author of Junius. The poet approached
the knight, Will your kindness, Sir Philip, excuse my addressing to
you a single question? At your peril, sir! was the harsh and the
laconic answer. The bard returned to his friends, who eagerly asked
him the result of his application. I don’t know, he answered, whether
he is Junius: but, if he be, he is certainly Junius Brutus.
800. A girl forced by her parents into a disagreeable match with an
old man, whom she detested, when the clergyman came to that part
of the service where the bride is asked if she consents to take the
bridegroom for her husband, said, with great simplicity, Oh dear, no,
sir; but you are the first person who has asked my opinion upon the
affair.
801. It is well known that the veterans who preside at the
examinations of surgeons, question minutely those who wish to
become qualified. After answering very satisfactorily to the
numerous inquiries made, a young gentleman was asked, if he
wished to give his patient a profuse perspiration, what he would
prescribe. He mentioned many diaphoretic medicines in case the first
failed, but the unmerciful questioner thus continued, Pray, sir,
suppose none of those succeeded, what step would you take next?
Why, sir, enjoined the harassed young Esculapius, I would send him
here to be examined; and if that did not give him a sweat, I do not
know what would.
802. There is a celebrated reply of Mr. Curran to a remark of Lord
Clare, who exclaimed at one of his legal positions, O! if that be law,
Mr. Curran, I may burn my law books! Better read them, my lord,
was the sarcastic and appropriate rejoinder.
803. Rock, the comedian, when at Covent Garden, advised one of
the scene-shifters, who had met with an accident, to the plan of a
subscription; and a few days afterwards he asked for the list of
names, which, when he read it over, he returned. Why, Rock, said
the poor fellow, won’t you give me something? Zounds, man, replied
the other, didn’t I give you the hint.
804. When Mr. Hankey was in vogue as a great banker, a sailor had
as part of his pay, a draft on him for fifty pounds. This the sailor
thought an immense sum, and calling at the house, insisted upon
seeing the master in private. This was at length acceded to; and
when the banker and the sailor met together, the following
conversation ensued. Sailor: Mr. Hankey, I’ve got a tickler for you—
didn’t like to expose you before the lads.—Hankey: That was kind.
Pray, what’s this tickler?—Sailor: Never mind, don’t be afraid, I won’t
hurt you; ’tis a fifty.—Hankey: Ah! that’s a tickler, indeed.—Sailor:
Don’t fret; give me five pounds now, and the rest at so much a
week, I shan’t mention it to anybody.
805. A conceited coxcomb once said to a barber’s boy, Did you ever
shave a monkey? Why no, sir, replied the boy, never; but if you will
please to sit down, I will try.
806. An Irishman, a short time since, bid an extraordinary price for
an alarum clock, and gave as a reason, That, as he loved to rise
early, he had nothing to do but to pull the string, and he could wake
himself.
807. A certain noble lord being in his early years much addicted to
dissipation, his mother advised him to take example by a gentleman,
whose food was herbs, and his drink water. What! madam, said he,
would you have me to imitate a man who eats like a beast and
drinks like a fish?
808. The town of Chartres was besieged by Henry IV., and at last
capitulated. The magistrate of the town, on giving up his keys,
addressed his majesty:—This town belongs to your highness by
divine law, and by human law. And by cannon law, too, added
Henry.
809. The Marquis St. André applied to Louvois, the war-minister of
Louis XIV., for a small place then vacant. Louvois having received
some complaints against the marquis, refused to comply. The
nobleman, somewhat nettled, rather hastily said, If I were to enter
again into the service, I know what I would do. And pray what
would you do? inquired the minister in a furious tone. St. André
recollected himself, and had the presence of mind to say, I would
take care to behave in such a manner, that your excellency should
have nothing to reproach me with. Louvois, agreeably surprised at
this reply, immediately granted his request.
810. An Irish soldier, who came over with General Moore, being
asked if he met with much hospitality in Holland? O yes, replied he,
too much: I was in the hospital almost all the time I was there.
811. Henry IV. having bestowed the cordon bleu on a nobleman, at
the solicitation of the Duke de Nevers, when the collar was put on,
the nobleman made the customary speech, Sire, I am not worthy. I
know it well, said the king, but I give you the order to please my
cousin De Nevers.
812. Dr. A., physician at Newcastle, being summoned to a vestry, in
order to reprimand the sexton for drunkenness, he dwelt so long on
the sexton’s misconduct, as to raise his choler so as to draw from
him this expression:—Sir, I was in hopes you would have treated my
failings with more gentleness, or that you would have been the last
man alive to appear against me, as I have covered so many blunders
of yours!
813. When I have a cold in my head, said a gentleman in company, I
am always remarkably dull and stupid. You are much to be pitied,
then, sir, replied another, for I don’t remember ever to have seen
you without.
814. A prisoner, at the bar of the Mayor’s Court, being called on to
plead to an indictment for larceny, was told by the clerk to hold up
his right hand. The man immediately held up his left hand. Hold up
your right hand, said the clerk. Please your honour, said the culprit,
still keeping up his left hand, I am left-handed.
815. In a large party, one evening, the conversation turned upon
young men’s allowance at College. Tom Sheridan lamented the ill-
judging parsimony of many parents, in that respect. I am sure, Tom,
said his father, you need not complain; I always allowed you eight
hundred a year. Yes, father, I must confess you allowed it; but then
it was never paid.
816. When Dr. Parr’s preface to Bellendenus was the theme of
general admiration, Horne Tooke said of it, rather contemptuously, It
consists of mere scraps; alluding to the frequent use of the
Ciceronean language. This sarcasm was mentioned to Parr, who
afterwards meeting Tooke, said to him, So, Mr. Tooke, you think my
Preface mere scraps? True, replied Tooke, with inimitable readiness,
but you know, my dear Doctor, scraps are often tit-bits.
817. An old woman received a letter from the post-office, at New
York. Not knowing how to read, and being anxious to know the
contents, supposing it to be from one of her absent sons, she called
on a person near to read the letter to her. He accordingly began and
read: Charleston, June 23, 1826. Dear mother,—then making a stop
to find out what followed (as the writing was rather bad), the old
lady exclaimed—Oh, ’tis my poor Jerry, he always stuttered!
818. When Kleber was in Egypt, he sustained, during five hours,
with only two thousand men, the united efforts of twenty thousand.
He was nearly surrounded, was wounded, and had only a narrow
defile by which to escape. In this extremity, he called to him a chef
de bataillon, named Chevardin, for whom he had a particular regard.
Take, said he to him, a company of grenadiers, and stop the enemy
at the ravine. You will be killed, but you will save your comrades.
Yes, general, replied Chevardin. He gave his watch and his pocket-
book to his servant, executed the order, and his death, in fact,
arrested the enemy, and saved the French.
819. An Irish gentleman was relating in company that he saw a
terrible wind the other night. Saw a wind! said another, I never
heard of a wind being seen! But, pray, what was it like? Like to have
blown my house about my ears, replied the first.
820. Dr. O’Connor, in his History of Poland, says that the Irish are
long-lived; that some of them attain to the age of a hundred: in
short, adds the doctor, they live as long as they can.
821. An Irish labourer bought a pair of shoes, and at the same time
asked the shoemaker, if he could tell him what would prevent them
going down on the sides? The shoemaker said, The only way to
prevent that was to change them every morning. Pat accordingly
returned the following morning, called for a pair of shoes, fitted
them on, left the pair he bought the day before, and was walking
out of the shop without further notice, when the shoemaker called to
him to know what he was doing, telling him at the same time, that
he had forgotten to pay for the shoes he had just bought. And is it
what am I doing, you ask? Am not I doing what you told me
yesterday, changing my shoes every morning?
822. Notwithstanding the perpetual contention between Rich and
Garrick for the favour of the town, they lived upon very friendly
terms. Rich had improved his house at Covent Garden, and made it
capable of holding more. Garrick went with him to see it, and asked
him in the theatrical phrase, How much money it would hold? Sir,
said Rich, that question I am at present unable to answer, but were
you to appear but one night on my stage, I should be able to tell
you to the utmost shilling.
823. Sir William Curtis lately sat near a gentleman at a civic dinner,
who alluded to the excellence of the knives, adding, that articles
manufactured from Cast steel were of a very superior quality, such
as razors, forks, &c. Aye, replied the facetious baronet, and soap too
—there’s no soap like Castile soap.
824. A miller, who attempted to be witty at the expense of a youth
of weak intellects, accosted him with, John, people say that you are
a fool. To this, John replied, I don’t know that I am, sir; I know
some things, sir, and some things I don’t know, sir. Well, John, what
do you know? I know that millers always have fat hogs, sir. And
what don’t you know? I don’t know whose corn they eat, sir.
825. When Dr. Ehrenberg (the Prussian traveller) was in Egypt, he
said to a peasant, I suppose you are quite happy now; the country
looks like a garden, and every village has its minaret. God is great!
replied the peasant; our master gives with one hand and takes with
two.
826. Frank Hayman was a dull dog. When he buried his wife, a
friend asked him why he expended so much money on her funeral?
Ah, sir, replied he, she would have done as much, or more, for me,
with pleasure.
827. At a doctor’s shop, a few doors from Westminster Bridge, may
be seen written up the following notification: — ——, surgeon,
apothecary, and accoucheur to the king.
828. A certain bishop having recently conferred a piece of
preferment on an able and amiable divine, resident near London, the
gentleman wrote to his son, who was at school at Brighton,
announcing the circumstance; adding, how extremely kind the
bishop had been in giving him a stall: to which the youth returned
the following answer: Dear father, I am extremely glad to hear of
your preferment—now the bishop has given you another stall,
perhaps you will keep a horse for me.
829. Some one seeing a beggar in his shirt, in winter, as brisk as
another muffled up to the ears in furs, asked him how he could
endure to go so? The man of many wants replied, Why, sir, you go
with your face bare; I am all face. A good reply, for a regular beggar,
whether taken in a jocose or a philosophical sense.
830. How do you find yourself, Mrs. Judy? said a St. Bartholomew’s
surgeon, after taking off the arm of an Irish basket-woman. How do
I find myself? why, without my arm—how the devil else should I?
831. A loving husband once waited on a physician to request him to
prescribe for his wife’s eyes, which were very sore. Let her wash
them, said the doctor, every morning, with a small glass of brandy. A
few weeks after, the doctor chanced to meet the husband. Well, my
friend, has your wife followed my advice? She has done everything
in her power to do it, doctor, said the spouse, but she never could
get the glass higher than her mouth.
832. Two Scotch clergymen, who were not so long-headed as they
themselves imagined, met one day at the turning of a street, and
ran their heads together unawares. The shock was rather stunning
to one of them. He pulled off his hat, and laying his hand on his
forehead, said, Sic a thump! my heed’s a’ ringing again. Nae wonder,
said his companion, your heed was aye Boss (empty), that makes it
ring; my heed disna ring a bit. How could it ring, said the other,
seeing it is cracket? cracket vessels never ring.—Each described the
other to a T.
833. I will save you a thousand pounds, said an Irishman to an old
gentleman, if you don’t stand in your own light. How? You have a
daughter, and you intend to give her ten thousand as a marriage
portion. I do, sir. I will take her with nine thousand.
834. An Irishman telling what he called an excellent story, a
gentleman observed, he had met with it in a book published many
years ago. Confound those ancients, said Teague, they are always
stealing one’s good thoughts.
835. A man of the name of Mark Noble, passing by the garrison at
Hull, the sentinel, as usual, called out, Who goes there? Twenty
shillings, answered Mark. That cannot be, said the sentinel. Why, a
Mark and a Noble make twenty shillings, said Mark.
836. I live in Julia’s eyes, said an affected dandy in Colman’s
hearing. I don’t wonder at it, replied George, since I observed she
had a sty in them when I saw her last.
837. A veteran at the battle of Trafalgar, who was actively employed
at one of the guns on the quarter-deck of the Britannia, had his leg
shot off below the knee, and observed to an officer, who was
ordering him to be conveyed to the cockpit, That’s but a shilling
touch; an inch higher and I should have had my eighteen pence for
it; alluding by this to the scale of pensions allowed for wounds,
which, of course, increase according to their severity. The same
hearty fellow, as they were lifting him on a brother tar’s shoulders,
said to one of his friends, Bob, take a look for my leg, and give me
the silver buckle out of my shoe; I’ll do as much for you, please God,
some other time.
838. Some time after Louis XIV. had collated the celebrated Bossuet
to the bishopric of Meaux, he asked the citizens how they liked their
new bishop. Why, your majesty, we like him pretty well. Pretty well!
why what fault have you to find with him? To tell your majesty the
truth, we should have preferred having a bishop who had finished
his education; for whenever we wait upon him, we are told that he is
at his studies.
839. A boy who did not return after the holidays to Winchester
school, by the time the master had charged him to do, returned at
last loaded with a fine ham, as a bribe. The master took the ham,
and told him, that he might give his compliments to his mother for
the ham, but assured him it should not save his bacon, and flogged
him.
840. Previous to a late general election, two candidates for a
northern county met in a ball-room. Why do you sit still? said a
friend, to one of them, whilst your opponent is tripping it so
assiduously with the electors’ wives and daughters? The aspirant for
parliamentary fame replied, I have no objection to his dancing for
the county, if I am allowed to sit for it.
841. An uninformed Irishman, hearing the Sphinx alluded to in
company, whispered to a friend, Sphinx! who is he now? A monster-
man. Oh, a Munster man! I thought he was from Connaught, replied
the Irishman, determined not to seem totally unacquainted with the
family.
842. An Irish gentleman, sojourning at Mitchner’s Hotel, Margate,
felt much annoyed at the smallness of the bottles, considering the
high price of the wine. One evening, taking his glass with a friend in
the coffee-room, the pompous owner came in, when the gentleman,
after apologizing to Mitchner, told him he and his friend had laid a
wager, which he must decide, by telling him what profession he was
bred to. Mitchner, after some hesitation at the question, answered
that he was bred to the law. Then, said the gentleman, I have lost,
for I laid that you was bred a packer. A packer, sir! said Mitchner,
swelling like a turkey-cock, what could induce you, sir, to think I was
bred a packer? Why, sir, said the other, I judged so from your wine
measures, for I thought no man but a skilful packer could put a
quart of wine into a pint bottle.
843. Lady Carteret, wife of the lord lieutenant of Ireland, in Swift’s
time, said to him, The air of this country is good. For God’s sake,
madam, said Swift, don’t say so in England: if you do they will
certainly tax it.
844. King Charles II. was reputed a great connoisseur in naval
architecture. Being once at Chatham, to view a ship just finished, on
the stocks, he asked the famous Killigrew, if he did not think he
should make an excellent shipwright? who pleasantly replied, He
always thought his majesty would have done better at any other
trade than his own. No favourable compliment, but as true a one,
perhaps, as ever was paid.
845. One day Dean Swift observed a great rabble assembled before
the deanery door, in Kevin Street, and upon inquiring into the cause
of it, he was told they were waiting to see the eclipse. He
immediately sent for the beadle and told him what he should do.
Away ran Davy for his bell, and after ringing it some time among the
crowd, bawled out—O yes, O yes? all manner of persons here
concerned are desired to take notice, that it is the Dean of St.
Patrick’s good will and pleasure, that the eclipse be put off till this
time to-morrow! so God save the king and his reverence the dean.
The mob upon this dispersed; only some Irish wit, more shrewd and
cunning than the rest, said, with great self-complacency, that they
would not lose another afternoon, for that the dean, who was a very
comical man, might take it into his head to put off the eclipse again,
and so make fools of them a second time.
846. Some school-boys meeting a poor woman driving asses, one of
them said to her, Good morning, mother of asses! Good morning, my
children, was the reply.
847. A clergyman being at the point of death, a neighbouring
brother, who had some interest with his patron, applied to him for
the next presentation; upon which the former, who soon recovered,
upbraided him with a breach of friendship, and said he wanted his
death. No, no, doctor, said the other, you quite mistake: it was your
living I wanted.
848. A gentleman in company complaining that he was very subject
to catch cold in his feet, another, not over-loaded with sense, told
him that might easily be prevented, if he would follow his directions.
I always get, said he, a thin piece of lead out of an India chest, and
fit it to my shoe for this purpose. Then, sir, said the former, you are
like a rope-dancer’s pole, you have lead at both ends.
849. The late Duchess of Kingston, who was remarkable for having a
very high sense of her own dignity, being one day detained in her
carriage by a cart of coals that was unloading in the street, she
leaned with both her arms upon the door, and asked the fellow, How
dare you, sirrah, stop a woman of quality in the street? Woman of
quality! replied the man. Yes, fellow, rejoined her grace, don’t you
see my arms upon my carriage? Yes, I do, indeed, said he, and a
pair of plaguy coarse arms they are.
850. A worthy churchwarden of Canterbury lately excused himself,
by note, from a dinner party, by alleging that he was engaged in
taking the senses (census) of his parish.
851. On the day for renewing the licences of the publicans in the
West Riding of Yorkshire, one of the magistrates said to an old
woman who kept a little alehouse, that he trusted she did not put
any pernicious ingredients into the liquor; to which she replied,
There is nought pernicious put into our barrels but the exciseman’s
stick.
852. Some soldiers at Chelsea were bragging of the privations they
had often undergone; when one of them said, he had slept for
weeks on rough boards, with a wooden pillow; the other observed,
that was a comfort to what he endured, having slept night after
night, in Italy, on marble. An Irish fisherman, who was in company,
observed, It was all bother and nonsense, for he had often slept on
a bed of oysters.
853. A droll fellow, who got a livelihood by fiddling at fairs and about
the country, was one day met by an acquaintance that had not seen
him a great while, who accosted him thus: Bless me! what, are you
alive? Why not? answered the fiddler; did you send anybody to kill
me? No, replied the other, but I was told you were dead. Ay, so it
was reported, it seems, said the fiddler, but I knew it was false as
soon as I heard it.
854. Mr. M——, the artist, was reading the paper the other day,
while his boy, who had the daily task of preparing his palette for
him, was rubbing in the various tints, when the boy suddenly
stopped, and, with an anxious look, said, Pray, sir, I have heard so
much about it, will you have the goodness to tell me what is the
Color o’ Morbus?
855. Milton, the British Homer, and prince of modern poets, in his
latter days, and when he was blind—(a thing some men do with
their eyes open), married a shrew. The Duke of Buckingham one
day, in Milton’s hearing, called her a rose. I am no judge of flowers,
observed Milton, but it may be so, for I feel the thorns daily.
856. One of the wooden mitres, carved by Gui. Gibbon, over one of
the stalls, in the cathedral church of Canterbury, happening to
become loose, Jessy White, the surveyor of that edifice, inquired of
the dean whether he should make it fast; for, perhaps, said Jessy, it
may fall on your reverence’s head. Well, Jessy, suppose it does,
answered the humorous Cantab, suppose it does fall on my head, I
don’t know that a mitre falling on my head would hurt it.
857. A gentleman of Magdalen College, whose name was Nott,
returning late from his friend’s rooms in rather a merry mood, and,
not quite able to preserve his centre of gravity, in his way home,
attracted the attention of the proctor, who demanded his name and
college. I am Nott of Maudlin, was the hiccuping reply. Sir, said the
proctor, in an angry tone, I did not ask of what college you are not,
but of what college you are. I am Nott of Maudlin, was again the
broken reply. The proctor, enraged at what he considered contumely,
insisted on accompanying him to Maudlin, whither having arrived, he
demanded of the porter whether he knew the gentleman. Know him,
sir, said the porter, yes, it is Mr. Nott, of this college. The proctor now
perceived his error in not understanding the gentleman, and,
laughing heartily at the affair, wished him a good night.
858. Bishop Sherlock and Hoadly were both fresh-men of the same
year, at Catherine Hall, Cambridge. The classical subject in which
they were first lectured, was Tully’s Offices, and it so happened, one
morning, that Hoadly received a compliment from the tutor for the
excellence of his construing. Sherlock, a little vexed at the
preference shown to his rival (for such they then were), and,
thinking to bore Hoadly by the remark, said, when they left the
lecture-room, Ben, you made good use of L’Estrange’s translation to-
day. Why, no, Tom, retorted Hoadly, I did not, for I had not got one;
and I forgot to borrow yours, which is the only one in the college.
859. A cockney sportsman, being out one day amusing himself with
shooting, happened to fire through a hedge, on the other side of
which was a man, standing or leaning, no matter which. The shot
passed through the man’s hat, but missed the bird. Did you fire at
me, sir? he hastily asked. O no, sir, said the shrewd sportsman, I
never hit what I fire at.
860. Some persons broke into the stables belonging to a troop of
horse, which was quartered at Carlisle, and wantonly docked the tail
of every horse close to the rump. The captain, relating the
circumstance next day, to a brother officer, said he was at a loss
what to do with the horses. I fancy you must dispose of them by
wholesale, was the reply. Why by wholesale? Because you’ll certainly
find it impossible to retail them.
861. At one of the Holland House Sunday dinner-parties, a few years
ago, Crockford’s club, then forming, was talked of; and the noble
hostess observed, that the female passion for diamonds was surely
less ruinous than the rage for play among men. In short, you think,
said Mr. Rogers, that clubs are worse than diamonds. This joke
excited a laugh, and when it had subsided, Sydney Smith wrote the
following impromptu sermonet—most appropriately on a card;
Thoughtless that “all that’s brightest fades,”
Unmindful of that Knave of Spades,
The Sexton and his Subs:
How foolishly we play our parts!
Our wives on diamonds set their hearts,
We set our hearts on clubs.

862. The Duke of Clarence jocularly observing to a captain of the

navy, that he heard he read the Bible, wished to know what he had
learned from it. The captain replied that there was one part of
Scripture, at least, which he well remembered, and thought it
contained an admirable lesson. What is that? cried the duke. Not to
put my trust in princes! your royal highness.
863. Mr. Abrahams, said Lord Mansfield, this man is your son, and
cannot go in the same bail bond. He ish not my son, my lord. Why,
Mr. Abrahams, here are twenty in court will prove it. I will shwear,
my lord, he ish not. Take care, Abrahams, or I will send you to the
King’s Bench. Now, my lord, if your lordship pleases, I will tell you
the truth. Well, I shall be glad to hear the truth from a Jew, replied
Lord Mansfield. My lord, I wash in Amsterdam two years and three
quarters; when I came home I findish this lad; now the law obliges
me to maintain him; and consequently, my lord, he ish but my son-
in-law. Well, rejoined Lord Mansfield, this is the best definition of a
son-in-law I ever heard.
864. An Irishman being told that a friend of his had put his money in
the stocks, Well, said he, I never had a farthing in the stocks, but I
have had my legs often enough in them.
865. Dr. Fuller having requested one of his companions, who was a
bon vivant, to make an epitaph for him, received the following, with
the conceit of which he always expressed himself much pleased
—“Here lies Fuller’s earth.”
866. Two Irish seamen being on board a ship of war that was lying
at Spithead, one of them, looking on Haslar Hospital, observed, How
much that building puts me in mind of my father’s stables. Arrah, my
honey, cried the other, come with me, and I will shew you what will
put you in mind of your father’s house. So saying, he led him to the
pig-sty. There, said he, does not that put you in mind of your
father’s parlour?
867. At a violent opposition election for Shrewsbury, in the reign of
George I., a half-pay officer, who was a non-resident burgess, was,
with some other voters, brought down from London at the expense
of Mr. Kynaston, one of the candidates. The old campaigner regularly
attended and feasted at the houses which were opened for the
electors in Mr. Kynaston’s interest, until the last day of the polling,
when, to the astonishment of the party, he gave his vote to his
opponent. For this strange conduct he was reproached by his
quondam companions, and asked, what could have induced him to
act so dishonourable a part, and become an apostate. An apostate!
answered the old soldier—an apostate! by no means. I made up my
mind about whom I should vote for before I set out upon this
campaign; but I remembered the duke’s constant advice to us when
I served with our army in Flanders—Always quarter upon the enemy,
my lads; always quarter upon the enemy.
868. One of those Hibernian lapidaries to whose skill the London
pavements are so highly indebted, was tried at the Old Bailey one
day for biting off the nose of a Welchman, a brother paviour, in a
quarrel, at their work. The unfortunate Cambrian appeared in court
with his noseless countenance, and swore the fact against the
prisoner; but Dennis stoutly denied it, and called his gossip, another
Hibernian paviour, to give evidence in his defence. This witness, with
great apparent simplicity, stated, That to be sure his gossip and the
other man had a little bit of a scrimmage, and both fell together;
that the Welchman made several attempts to bite his gossip’s face,
and at last he made a twist of his mouth, and bit off his own nose in
a mistake.
869. Counsellor Crips, of Cork, being on a party at Castle Martyr, the
seat of the Earl of Shannon, in Ireland, one of the company, who
was a physician, strolled out before dinner into the church-yard.
Dinner being served up, and the doctor not returned, some of the
company were expressing their surprise where he could be gone to.
Oh, said the counsellor, he is but just stepped out to pay a visit to
some of his old patients.
870. Sir John Davis, a Welchman, in the reign of King James I.,
wrote a letter to the king in these words: Most mighty Prince! the
gold mine that was lately discovered in Ballycurry turns out to be a
lead one.
871. An Irish gentleman in company, seeing that the lights were so
dim as only to render the darkness visible, called out lustily, Here,
waiter, let me have a couple of daycent candles, just that I may see
how these others burn.
872. An Irishman lately arriving in London, and passing through
Broad Street, observed a glass globe, containing some fine large
gold fish, he exclaimed—And sure, this is the first time in my life that
I have seen live red herrings.
873. The father of the celebrated Sheridan was one day descanting
on the pedigree of his family, regretting that they were no longer
styled the O’Sheridans, as they were formerly. Indeed, father, replied
Sheridan, then a boy, we have more right to the O than any one
else; for we owe everybody.
874. A country carpenter having neglected to make a gibbet (which
was ordered by the executioner), on the ground that he had not
been paid for the last he erected, gave so much offence, that the
next time the judge went the circuit he was sent for. Fellow, said the
judge, in a stern tone, how came you to neglect making the gibbet
that was ordered on my account? I humbly beg your pardon, said
the carpenter, had I known it had been for your lordship, it should
have been done immediately.
875. An Intendant of Montpellier, having lost his lady, was solicitous
that the chief officers of the city should attend her funeral
obsequies. This honour the magistrates thought proper to refuse,
because it was not customary, and might introduce a bad precedent.
With a view, however, to conciliate the favour of a person whom it
would not be their interest to offend, they politely added, If, sir, it
had been your own funeral, we should have attended it with the
greatest pleasure.
876. An Irish bookseller, previous to a trial in which he was the
defendant, was informed by his counsel, that if there were any of
the jury to whom he had personal objection, he might legally
challenge them. Faith, and so I will, replied he; if they do not bring
me off handsomely I will shoot every man of them.
877. A prisoner confined in a French prison for a petty debt, lately
sent to his creditor, to let him know he had a proposal to make for
their mutual benefit. The creditor came, and the incarcerated thus
addressed him: Sir, I have been thinking that it is a very idle thing
for me to be here, and put you to the expense of twenty sous a day.
My being so chargeable to you has given me great uneasiness, and
God knows what it may cost you in the end. Therefore, I propose
that you should let me out of prison, and, instead of a franc, you
shall allow me only ten sous a day, and the other half franc shall go
towards the discharge of the debt.[C]
[C] By the French law a creditor is bound to allow his debtor a
franc a day so long as he detains him in prison.
878. Porson was no less distinguished for his wit and humour during
his residence in Cambridge, than for his profound learning; and he
would frequently divert himself by sending quizzical morceaux, in the
shape of notes, to his companions. He one day sent his gyp with a
note to a certain Cantab, who is now a D.D. and master of his
college, requesting him to find the value of nothing; next day he met
his friend walking, and, stopping him, he desired to know, whether
he had succeeded? His friend answered, Yes. And what may it be?
asked Porson. Sixpence! replied he, which I gave the man for
bringing the note.
879. A fellow of atrocious ugliness chanced to pick up a looking-
glass on his road. But when he looked at himself he flung it away in
a rage, crying, Curse you, if you were good for anything you would
not have been thrown away by your owner.
880. Dr. Graham being on his stage at Chelmsford, in Essex, in order
to promote the sale of his medicines, told the country people that he
came there for the good of the public, not for want. Then speaking
to his merry Andrew, Andrew, said he, do we come here for want?
No, faith, sir, said Andrew, we have enough of that at home.
881. An Irish gentleman meeting his nephew, who told him he had
just been entered at college, replied, I am extremely happy to hear
it; make the most of your time and abilities, and I hope I shall live to
hear you preach my funeral sermon.
882. An old gentleman, who used to frequent one of the coffee-
houses in Dublin, being unwell, thought he might make so free as to
steal an opinion concerning his case; accordingly, one day he took
an opportunity of asking one of the faculty, who sat in the same box
with him, what he should take for such a complaint? Advice, said the
doctor.
883. An Irishman maintained in company that the sun did not make
his revolution round the earth. But how, said one to him, is it
possible, that having reached the west, where he sets, he could be
seen to rise in the east, if he did not pass underneath the globe?
How puzzled you are, replied the obstinate ignorant man; he returns
the same way; and if it be not perceived, it is on account of his
coming back by night.
884. Baron d’Adrets occasionally made his prisoners throw
themselves headlong, from the battlements of a high tower, upon
the pikes of his soldiers. One of these unfortunate persons, having
approached the battlements twice, without venturing to leap, the
baron reproached him with his want of courage, in a very insulting
manner. Why, sir, said the prisoner, bold as you are, I would give you
five times before you took the leap. This pleasantry saved the poor
fellow’s life.
885. An Irishman, angling in the rain, was observed to keep his line
under the arch of a bridge; upon being asked the reason, he gave
the following answer: To be sure, the fishes will be after crowding
there, in order to keep out of the wet.
886. A foolish fellow went to the parish priest, and told him, with a
very long face, that he had seen a ghost. When and where? said the
pastor. Last night, replied the timid man, I was passing by the
church, and up against the wall of it, did I behold the spectre. In
what shape did it appear? replied the priest. It appeared in the
shape of a great ass. Go home, and say not a word about it,
rejoined the pastor: you are a very timid man, and have been
frightened by your own shadow.
887. A lady remarking to a bookseller that she had just had Crabbe’s
Tales, and thought them excellent; another lady heard the
observation with astonishment, and on the departure of the speaker,
asked the bookseller, with a very grave face, If he could tell her how
the crab’s tails were dressed, as she should like much to taste them.
888. A very worthy, though not particularly erudite, underwriter at
Lloyd’s was conversing one day with a friend in the coffee-house, on
the subject of a ship they had mutually insured. His friend observed,
Do you know, I shrewdly suspect our ship is in jeopardy. The devil
she is! said he; well, I am glad that she has got into port at last.
889. Sir Thomas Overbury says, that the man who has not anything
to boast of but his illustrious ancestors, is like a potato plant—the
only good belonging to him is under ground.
890. It is well known that the celebrated lawyer Dunning (afterwards
Lord Ashburton) was a severe cross-examiner, unsparing in his
sarcasms and reflections upon character, when he thought that the
truth might be elicited by alarming a witness. He sometimes was
harsh and overbearing, when milder behaviour would have done him
more credit, and answered his purpose quite as well. Among the
numerous rebukes which he received for this habit of severity, the
following is related, from his brother barrister, Jack Lee. He
mentioned to Lee that he had made a purchase of some manors in
Devonshire. It would be well, said Lee, if you could bring them to
Westminster Hall.
891. The late Lee Lewes shooting on a field, the proprietor attacked
him violently: I allow no person, said he, to kill game on my manor
but myself, and I’ll shoot you, if you come here again. What, said
the other, I suppose you mean to make game of me.
892. George the Fourth, on hearing some one declare that Moore
had murdered Sheridan, in his biography of that statesman,
observed: I won’t say that Mr. Moore has murdered Sheridan, but he
has certainly attempted his life.
893. The late Duke of Norfolk was remarkably fond of his bottle. On
a masquerade night, he consulted Foote as to what character he
should appear in. Don’t go disguised, said Foote, but assume a new
character; go sober.
894. Lord B—, who sports a ferocious pair of whiskers, meeting Mr.
O’Connell in Dublin, the latter said, When do you mean to place your
whiskers on the peace establishment? When you place your tongue
on the civil list! was the witty rejoinder.
895. A gentleman, at whose house Swift was once dining in Ireland,
introduced at dinner remarkably small hock glasses, and at length
turning to Swift addressed him,—Mr. Dean, I shall be happy to take
a glass of hic, hæc, hoc, with you. Sir, rejoined the doctor, I shall be
happy to comply, but it must be out of a hujus glass.
896. There were two very fat noblemen at the court of Louis the
Fifteenth, the Duke de L— and the Duke de N—. They were both
one day at the levee, when the king began to rally the former on his
corpulence. You take no exercise, I suppose, said the king. Pardon
me, sire, said de L—, I walk twice a day round my cousin de N—.
897. An avaricious fenman, who kept a very scanty table, dining on
Saturday with his son at an ordinary in Cambridge, whispered in his
ear, Tom, you must eat for to-day and to-morrow. O, yes, retorted
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