Letter from Max Halberstadt to Sigmund Freud

SF/01/34

Letter from Max Halberstadt to Sigmund Freud

1914

Letter from Max Halberstadt to Sigmund Freud, 1914-04-30.

1p

Son of Seew Halberstadt and Mathilde Wolff, Max Halberstadt was born in Hamburg on 14 May 1882. He was an artistic photographer who also made portraits and technical photographs. On 28 July 1912, Halberstadt became engaged to the daughter of Sigmund and Martha Freud, Sophie. They married in Hamburg on 14 January 1913. Their first child, Ernst Wolfgang, was born on 11 March 1914. He was the child Sigmund Freud observed playing ?Fort-da? with a cotton reel and wrote about in a chapter in ?Beyond the Pleasure Principle?. They had another son, named Heinz, born in Schwerin in 1918. Halberstadt photographed his father-in-law and the portrait of Freud holding his cigar has become iconic. His earliest portrait of Freud was published with the article ?Der Schöpfer der Neuen Seelenkunde (Professor Sigmund Freud)? by Theodor Reik in 1914. As well as being a respected portrait photographer, Halberstadt was one of the founding members of the Gesellschaft Deutscher Lichtbildner.

In 1920, Sophie?s life was tragically cut short due to the interwar influenza epidemic. She was 26 when she died. Three years later Heinz died from tuberculosis. In 1923, Halberstadt married a woman called Berta. In 1936, Halberstadt emigrated to South Africa to escape the increasing persecution of the National Socialists. He died in Johannesburg on 30 December 1940.