How did dogs come into the life of the Freud family?
The London “Guardian” newspaper reported on this as follows:
“The more than 70-year-old Sigmund Freud’s life was not suitable for the company of dogs, but this changed in the mid-1920s when Freud’s 30-year-old daughter became the owner of Wolf, the wonderful and intelligent German Shepherd dog.
Freud showed for the first time after a few weeks that he was happy with the dog, and eventually fell madly in love with him. So much so that in 1925 Anna, in jealous anger, wrote this: ‘I did not give papa a gift for his birthday because there is currently no suitable gift for this occasion. I only brought him a funny picture of Wolf because I think he loves him very much.’
In 1938, when Freud was forced to leave Vienna, Wolf’s picture still hung in his office. In a beautiful book from photographs – taken a few days before he left his home and office, which was located on Bergstrasse in Vienna – an explanatory note, a picture from the showcase about Freud’s exotic objects:
“Next to the cabinet on the left side of the bookshelf is a touching personal note – in this magnificent environment – a photograph hangs on the wall of Anna Freud’s dog, Wolf. Miss Freud recalls that on her father’s every birthday a celebratory poem about Wolf, which he wrote on the occasion, must be presented.”
In 1928, Dorothy Burlingham, a close friend of Anna’s, gave her own dog as a gift to Freud; the chow’s name was Lun-Yü. Sadly, Lun-Yü died 15 months later, after turning back at the Salzburg train station on the way to Vienna, and a few days later was found dead between the rails. Freud was devastated by the tragedy and mourned him for seven months.
The father of psychoanalysis adored Middle Eastern and Asian artifacts, things, so he probably gave his first dog the name Lun-Yü, after 論語.
From the collection of Confucius’ sayings.
According to an article published in the “The Forward” newspaper:
“Freud named the dog Yofi – or Jofi, as he spelled it in German, but it cannot be found this way in the German dictionary – Yofi means ‘the beauty’ in Hebrew (in Israel today this word means ‘great’ or ‘fantastic’ in everyday use) and I have no doubt that Freud, who had a much better Hebrew and Jewish upbringing as a boy than usual, got it from there. Thus Yofi was a Jewish dog.”
It is possible he was a kosher dog as well. From Anna’s poems it was revealed that Wolf was fed table scraps and the tradition continued with Jofi too, wrote the “The Guardian” newspaper:
“Freud always fed Jofi gourmet bites from his plate and since he often experienced pain when eating with his sick jaw, Jofi finally ate almost everything from Freud’s dinner every time and this factor contributed to the dog’s chubby shape.”
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