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Freiberg. According to a document describing him as a man of good standing, Jakob Freud
was still In Freiberg on March 23, 1859.67 Certainly for a family to migrate to a new city
in winter or early spring just after the wife had had a new baby would seem most ill advised
and unlikely.68 It was a dismal time of year; the journey would have required a 12-mile trip
by cart to the nearest train station, in Stauding (Studenka)69; and the family had had a baby
die about a year earlier. It is therefore probable that they did not leave until somewhat
later than March.
There is also a record of Amalia Freud already in Leipzig requesting a passport extension; this record is dated August 11, 1859.70 Thus the Jakob Freuds clearly left Freiberg for Leipzig sometime between March 23 and August 11, and probably not until late spring or summer. Freud himself wrote in his curriculum vitae in 1885 that he was three years old when he left with his parents for Leipzig and then Vienna.71 Also, he noted in 1899 In an autobiographical writing (Screen Memories) that he left his birthplace when he was a “full three years of age” [“von voll drei Jahren habe ich nämlich meinen kleinen Geburtsort verlassen”].72 Both of these comments would mean that he left after May 6, his birthday. Krüll assumes that one of Freud’s famous memories took place in Freiberg in middle to late spring of 1859, and this would imply that they were still there in May or early lune of 1859.73 I take all this to mean that the Jakob Freuds were in Freiberg until sometime between late May and late July at the latest. Evidence is given below to suggest an early June departure from Freiberg. The next question to ask is this: When was the nanny dismissed? The standard answer, first proposed by Jones and uncritically accepted since then, is some time shortly after December 31, 1858. At this time (i.e., by January 6), Sigmund was already two years and eight months old, not two and a half, as Jones claims. But I now propose a different and later date for the nanny’s sudden removal from Freud’s life. There are grounds for a psychological interpretation, presented later, involving Freud’s emotional associations with Easter and especially Pentecost (Whitsun); these imply that the nanny vanished on or shortly after one of these important holidays, presumably in the spring of that year. In 1859, Easter was unusually late, occurring on April 24; Pentecost would have fallen seven weeks later, on June 12.74 (Pentecost is 50 days after Easter, specifically seven Sundays after, and it usually falls in late May.) That Freud had his nanny until late May or early June, when he would have been just over three years old, is consistent with Freud’s own comments and with Krüll’s proposal that the family left Freiberg in the late spring or early summer of 1859. The major piece of evidence used to date when the nanny was fired is the letter written by Freud to his colleague, Wilhelm Fliess, in October 1897 (part of which has been cited earlier): |