3939
(1920)
DR. ANTON VON FREUND, who has been General Secretary of the International Psycho-Analytical Association since the Budapest Congress in September 1918, died on January 20, 1920, in a Vienna sanatorium, a few days after completing his fortieth year. He was the most powerful promoter of our science and one of its brightest hopes. Born in Budapest in 1880, he obtained a doctorate in philosophy. He intended to become a teacher, but was persuaded to enter his father’s industrial undertaking. But the great successes he attained as a manufacturer and organizer failed to satisfy the two needs which were active in the depths of his nature - for social benefaction and scientific activity. Seeking nothing for himself, and possessing every gift which can charm and captivate, he used his material powers to assist others and to soften the hardness of their destiny as well as to sharpen in all directions the sense of social justice. In this way he acquired a wide circle of friends, who will deeply mourn his loss.
When, during his last years, he came to know psycho-analysis, it seemed to him to promise the fulfilment of his two great wishes. He set himself the task of helping the masses by psycho-analysis and of making use of the therapeutic effects of that medical technique, which had hitherto only been at the service of the rich, in order to mitigate the neurotic suffering of the poor. Since the State took no heed of the neuroses of the common people, since hospital clinics for the most part rejected psycho-analytic therapy without being able to offer any substitute for it, and since the few psycho-analytic physicians, tied by the necessity for maintaining themselves, were unequal to such a gigantic task, Anton von Freund sought, by his private initiative, to open a path for every one towards the fulfilment of this important social duty. During the years of the war he had collected what was then the very considerable sum of one and a half million kronen for humanitarian purposes in the city of Budapest. With the concurrence of Dr Stephan von Bárczy, the then Burgomaster, he assigned this sum for the foundation of a psycho-analytic Institute in Budapest, in which analysis was to be practised, taught and made accessible to the people. It was intended to train a considerable number of physicians in this Institute who would then receive an honorarium from it for the treatment of poor neurotics in an out-patient clinic. The Institute, furthermore, was to be a centre for further scientific research in analysis. Dr. Ferenczi was to be the scientific head of the Institute; von Freund himself was to undertake its organization and finances. The founder handed over a relatively smaller sum to Professor Freud for the foundation of an international psycho-analytic publishing house. But,
Was sind Hoffnungen, was sind Entwürfe,
die der Mensch, der vergängliche, baut?
Von Freund’s premature death has put an end to these philanthropic schemes, with all their scientific hopes. Though the fund which he collected is still in existence, the attitude of those who are now in power in the Hungarian capital gives no promise that his intentions will be fulfilled. Only the psycho-analytical publishing house has come to birth in Vienna.
None the less, the example which von Freund sought to set has already had its effect. A few weeks after his death, thanks to the energy and liberality of Dr. Max Eitingon, the first psycho-analytical out-patients’ clinic has been opened in Berlin. Thus von Freund’s work is carried on, though he himself can never be replaced or forgotten.