ALS in German, signed “Freud,” one page, 5.75 x 9, personal letterhead, November 11, 1932. Letter to German-American writer and Nazi sympathizer George Sylvester Viereck, in full (translated): "I read with satisfaction that Prof. Plesch’s promises are beginning to be fulfilled, so that you are feeling much better already. In the meantime I received your book about Wilson-House and read it through with great excitement. I have a special reason to be interested in this material, which I presently cannot reveal to you. Obviously the relationship between the two could only be comprehended, if one could understand each of them psychologically. With my best wishes for your complete recovery." In very good to fine condition, with two punch holes and an old tape stain to the left side, and a stain to the upper light corner area from old whiteout on the reverse.
Freud began a correspondence with Viereck after reading the latter's 1923 book Rejuvenation: How Steinach Makes People Young, a study on the Austrian endocrinologist Eugen Steinach. Viereck, a talented writer who had emigrated to America at a young age, obtained an interview with Freud not long after, and, taken by Freud’s brilliance and intellectual acceptance, became an instant stateside proponent of Freudian thought. The mention of “Wilson-House” refers to Viereck’s 1932 work Strangest Friendship: Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House, a book about American President Woodrow Wilson and his close advisor, diplomat Edward House. Freud’s “special reason” for being interested in the volume was that he too was preparing a book about Wilson, a collaborative project with his patient, Ambassador William C. Bullitt. The pair completed two major studies: the withheld The Tragedy of Woodrow Wilson, and, in 1930, Thomas Woodrow Wilson: Twenty-eighth President of the United States: A Psychological Study, an examination that remained unpublished until 1966, decades after Freud’s death. By 1933, the relationship between Freud and Viereck had dissolved entirely, with the former sending a private letter to Viereck condemning him for supporting the lies of the Hapsburg Crown Prince who stated that ‘no one in Germany suffered injustice on account of their religion.'
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