Happy 2015. It's that time of year when all the possibilities seem to open up. January 1 is an arbitrary date, of course, but who doesn't want to believe in fresh starts, in learning from our experiences, even if those experiences sometimes seem arbitrary too? I ended last year on a sad note, with the accidental death of a friend, Jean, who had become very important to me
Sigmund Freud
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
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
Oscar Nemon: Sculptor of Freud & Friends (Including Dogs)
My discovery of Oscar Nemon -- probably the most famous sculptor that almost no one has ever heard of -- started with a comment I received the other day on an earlier post, Richard Tauber: "How Can I Be a Jew?": Congratulations on an informative and amusing blog. As you mention Richard Tauber I thought you or one of your readers might be interested in my quest to
Framing Sigmund: The Mystery of Freud’s Glasses
Sigmund Freud's glasses are as central to his image as his cigars are -- perhaps more so. After middle age, Freud is never photographed sans specs, but his smokes are occasionally absent. Yet while Freud's cigars are much analyzed, his eye wear remains a mystery. Maybe Moscot? My interest in the topic was piqued earlier this week when my friend Penelope Starr wrote me that
Ezriel Kornmehl Seeks Out Sigmund Freud
Earlier this week, I returned to the story of Ezriel Kornmehl, introducing his parents and siblings -- and throwing in a little celebrity glitter. Today I take him from his birth in Tarnow, Poland, to the start and completion of his education in Vienna. From high school to med school Ezriel was born in 1891 and attended gymnasium (high school) in Tarnow. Upon the completion
19 Berggasse: A Twice-Famed Address
I've mentioned many times that this blog is a cousin magnet. I don't even have to try to attract relatives; they just gravitate towards the Kornmehl name. This is a wonderful thing, especially when I've been too busy to blog and I can entice one of the cousins to write a guest post. A brief note. You'll be hearing more soon about Lary Ecker, my third cousin once removed
Dr. Kornmehl, Prof. Freud & Jewish Activism
It's been interesting to speculate about Viktor Kornmehl and his brushes with the other, more famous doctors of Vienna. As Anna Redsand wrote in her wonderful guest post, there's a very strong likelihood that he was acquainted with Viktor Frankl in high school: It was a small institution and they were there at the same time. It's possible too that they bonded because both were
Viktor Kornmehl, Viktor Frankl & Sigmund Freud
Today I'm turning Freud's Butcher over to a guest blogger. You'll soon see why. I was amazed at the serendipity when I realized I knew the author of a biography of the latest psychologist to turn up in the life of a Kornmehl family member. *** Guest post by Anna Redsand "The more exciting part is that I may have discovered a link between Viktor Kornmehl and another, more
Family History Writing Challenge, Day 5: Ezriel’s Not-So-Lazy School Days
Thanks to the excellent student files kept by the Medical University of Vienna, Ezriel Kornmehl's academic life comes into far clearer focus than most other parts of his life -- at least so far. As a result of information that Jill Kornmehl gleaned, we know that Ezriel (I'm summarizing a bit from the original here): ...studied [at the University of Vienna] from March 1914
Family History Writing Challenge, Day 2: Why’d You Choose Those Relatives?
I explained on the first day of this challenge that I was going to look into the lives of Ezriel Kornmehl and Viktor Kornmehl. But neither Ezriel or Viktor is closely related to me -- or to each other. Why chose them as my subjects? Because of Sigmund Freud. As I've often mentioned, my maternal great uncle, Siegmund Kornmehl, sold meat to the father of psychoanalysis.
The Doktors Kornmehl & Professor Freud
One of the few stories my mother told about her life in Vienna was that her cousin Stella had been sent to see Sigmund Freud in the hope that her limp, resistant to traditional treatments or diagnoses, would prove to be psychosomatic (it didn't). The more I read about Freud, the more I think he was a regular guy, brilliant, but a schmoozer rather than a snob. Nevertheless, I
Freud, Humor & the Importance of Primary Sources
This seems to be Revisionist Week. Monday I wrote about how my great uncle's kosher butcher shop in Freud's building was not kosher after all: The Butcher Shop in Freud's Building: Kosher or No? Yesterday I followed up a post about wanting villainous ancestors with one that said that it might not be such a good idea if those ancestors were in your recent past: