This page is for those who knew and loved Jean to post pictures and remembrances, long or short. Feel free to post text remembrances in the comments section here. Edie Jarolim, Tucson, AZ I've met many wonderful people through this blog. I never know when a relative I didn't know I had or someone with information about Freud or rolled beef might turn up. But no one I met
If Freud Celebrated Sukkot
Jews around the world recently celebrated Sukkot, a joyous holiday that follows five days after the very solemn Yom Kippur; it has its roots as a harvest/agricultural festival. I won't attempt to explain it in detail here; if you want to read all about it, including a discussion of how to pronounce it, here's a link from Judaism 101. The relevant part is that people
7 Things You Didn’t Know About Sigmund Freud, Including His Eyeglass Prescription
I'd be hard pressed to guess how many pages have been devoted to the life and times of Sigmund Freud. Hundreds of thousands? Millions? I've contributed more than a hundred here alone. But there are still a few things about the father of psychoanalysis that most people don't know, 75 years after his death, details about his everyday life that get lost in the scholarship. To
And the Memoir Contest Winner Is…
First of all, thanks to all of you who participated in the win-a-great-memoir contest. Short and long, the family stories posted in the comments were great. I urge you to read all the them if you didn't when you posted your own story or if you're just checking in now. And the winner, chosen by Random.org, is... #11, a story of a family journey from small town
Contest: Tell Us About Your Family’s Journey, Win a Great Memoir
Besides changing their names, one of the greatest banes of family historians is that ancestors move around—and aren't always considerate enough to leave accurate records of their new addresses. They move for a variety reasons—some to strike out and start a better life, others, like many of my relatives, to flee imminent danger. I'm often amazed at how little I knew about
#FunnyFreudFriday: Toying Around With History
Yes, it's been a long time since I posted in the Funny Freud Friday category--or at all, come to think of it--but the timing was right. As a freelance writer, my budget doesn't include the many Freud tchotkes I covet, so you can imagine how excited I was to find that I could use my credits at a local used bookstore for a Sigmund Freud plush toy -- officially, The Unemployed
Karl Lueger vs Sigmund Freud: A Disturbing Contrast in Vienna’s Legacies
For most of my week in Vienna, my experience of the city was so positive as to be a bit surreal. I remembered Vienna from the early 1970s -- the only time I'd visited before -- as being gloomy and dour. I also imagined that, given what I'd learned over the last few years about my family's history, I would be coping with a lot of difficult emotions. Not so. The
Dueling Desserts, Plaster Poets, & Sigmund Freud: Vienna’s Cafe Culture
I've touched on the fact that my family members dabbled in sweets as well as meats in my last two posts, which involved my cousin Curt Allina, who lived across the street from Sigmund Freud and who later put the heads on PEZ. But the Kornmehl family also had a direct connection with a quintessentially Viennese concern: Coffeehouses. (For some background, see From Meat to
More Amazing Austrian Inventions! PEZ & Freud, Revisited
Mea culpa. In my last post, I talked about my cousin Curt Allina, who lived across the street from Freud when he was a boy and who has been credited with putting the heads on the PEZ dispensers. It was subsequently pointed out to me that, in the context of that discussion, I mistakenly identified the following item as a packet of PEZ, the kind that is put into PEZ dispensers
Fleischhauers, Freud & Pez: Vienna’s Famed Berggasse
I was in Vienna's Jewish Records Office last week -- was it really only last week? -- looking to fill in some key bits of my family history. When archivist Irma Wulz showed me the marriage records of my grandparents, Hermann Rosenbaum and Ernestine Kornmehl, I wasn't especially surprised to learn that the wedding witnesses had been David Schmerling,
Vienna Public Transit: A (Rather Wordy) Photo Essay
This will shock and amaze all who know me and my tendency to take terrible pictures/break cameras but I didn't do too badly this time, so I thought I'd post a few photo essays rather than try to write up all my experiences more formally. We'll see. I suspect there will be more words than pictures, in spite of my best intentions. Overview I love public transportation,
Cemetery Schlepping in Vienna: A Shaggy Deer Story
I like cemeteries, especially big sprawling ones with famous people buried in them. It's always interesting to see different forms of remembrance and, for the most part, they are quiet, park-like places to stroll and contemplate mortality. Or dinner. Having visited Karl Marx and George Eliot in London's Highgate, Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf and Jim Morrison in Pere Lachaise
Live from Vienna….It’s Saturday Night!
I've been in Vienna three days now...wait, make that four. As you may have suspected, none of the dire things I was worried about came to pass. I got an aisle seat on my overnight flight. I couldn't sleep anyway, but not because I was worried about climbing over someone to go to the bathroom. My luggage didn't get lost. It's heavy, but I'm glad I packed all the stuff I
Confessions of a Travel-Challenged Travel Writer
I have never been very good at the travel part of being a travel writer. As I've mentioned, I was primarily a travel journalist before I got a dog and became a dog writer and then found out that I was the great niece of Sigmund Freud's butcher and started this blog. That biographical tidbit wasn't especially relevant--until now, because I'm headed to Vienna. I thought
Inspiring My Vienna Visit: A Talk About Freud & Oscar Nemon
Several people have asked: What finally spurred you to visit Vienna this June? Good question. I've been wanting to go for more than 2½ years, ever since I found out about the connection between my great uncle, Siegmund Kornmehl, and Vienna's Sigmund Freud Museum, but had been dragging my heels. Money, ambivalence, pet care...I always had an excuse not to go. With the need