Poisoning Weiss 1883 #2

After the crime, they [organised serial killers] often follow the progress (or nonprogress) of the investigation in the news media.*
* Ressler, Robert K; Shachtman, Tom, Whoever fights monsters, 1993,p. 139.

In his letter about Nathan’s funeral, Freud informed his fiancé that, The papers print two interpretations, both false, one from her family, the other from his. Apparently, Freud’s story of the funeral, he recounted to his fiancé, wasn’t compatible with either of the ones published by the newspapers. This is nothing new considering that Freud was a compulsive liar. Unlike Freud, having no involvement with Nathan’s death, the newspapers, had no hidden motive to lie about what really was said and done at the funeral.

Newspaper articles about Nathan’s death

Both Nathan’s death and funeral were the subject of a number of articles in several Viennese newspapers due to Nathan’s elevated position in the medical world. Freud followed them with interest. Let's investigate all the articles published in the Viennese press on occasion of Nathan's death and his funeral.

September 15, 1883

The earliest newspaper report of Nathan's death appeared two days after his demise, in the Neue Freie Presse, [New Free Press] of September 15, 1883. The article stated:
In the "Wiener Medicinische Wochenschrift" [Vienna Medical Weekly] we read under the date of the 14th, "A terrifying news shook the medical circles of Vienna today - the news of the unexpected death of lecturer Dr. Nathan Weiss. ... a few months ago, he became the head of the outpatient clinic for nervous diseases in the Vienna General Hospital. ... his extraordinary talent and unusual diligence were shown in a series of "experimental and practical medicinal" work ... He was at the beginning of a brilliant career when a shattering fate ended his life. 

September 16, 1883

The next day, several Viennese newspapers reported about Nathan's death, and in more detail, which wasn’t surprising. After all, it doesn't happen that often that a highly talented and successful young doctor commits a suicide in the middle of the day, and in the public bathhouse. Notably, most of the articles in the Vienna newspapers recounting Weiss death have the same content, apparently provided to the papers by the same freelance writer. The articles describe Nathan's professional merits, recount how he spent his morning, provide the detail of his death, as well as intimate details from Nathan’s personal life. What is surprising and unusual for this kind of article, an obituary of a sort, is the fact that the personal content is highly demeaning, thus reminiscent of Freud's own letter to his fiancé cruelly denigrating the dead man.

Content of suicide letter

This is how Die Presse, in an article titled Suicide of Dr Weiss, presented the background of the tragic event.
In the letters left behind, he described mental illness as the motive for his desperate step, asking his relatives, acquaintances and friends to communicate the news of his death to his aged parents in the most gentle manner.
An apparent question to ask is, of course, how could the author of the article, unless he himself was the author of the letters, have known that there were suicide letters, that there were more than a single letter, and, even more remarkably, what was in the suicide letters. [Also Freud's letter to his fiancé stated that there were two letters (one to the police, one to the wife), likewise revealing their identical content.]
s a matter of course, suicide letters are not being made accessible to the public or journalists for that matter. Moreover, as Freud claimed Nathan asked the police not to provide the content of the letters to the press. So how did the journalist know what was in them?

Corresp. Wilh.

The source of their inside information about Nathan’s death, as well as about the content of the suicide letters, was the anonymous, Corresp. Wilh.. Notably, the person providing the information about Nathan used the English spelling in his moniker rather than the short form Korr. of the German word, “Korrespondent”.
A case in point: Freud was a anglophile, and thus likely to use the English word as a kind of mad clue to his identify. In fact, on occasion, Freud liked to insert English words in the letters to Martha and his boyfriend Fliess.

Contributor

In fact, Freud was not only reading the Viennese newspapers, but he was also writing articles for Viennese publications. As one Freudian investigator pointed out, he was a devoted reader of the Neue Freie Presse, to which he would even occasionally contribute, which makes the supposition that Freud also was the secret correspondent who recounted the matter of the mysterious suicide of Nathan Weiss even more plausible. (Notably, there's no mention of Nathan's suicide in the Neuie Freie Presse on this date).
Freud used the same moniker in future articles when he wanted to remain anonymous. Thus, as Crews recounted, in 1884, Freud signed, a brief notice titled Cocaine” … in the Philadelphia journal Medical News, “From Our Special Correspondent. Vienna”. This wasn’t the first time since, as Freud scholar Alexander Grinstein showed … Freud had previously published in the same journal and had used exactly the same designation.” Without a doubt, as usual, suffering from the repetition compulsion, on other occasions in the future, Freud used the same moniker as in his earlier contribution to the Neue Freie Presse describing Nathan’s tragic fate to which he contributed.

Melancholia

As the article recounted, Nathan, aged 32, the year before, became the head of the outpatient clinic for nervous illnesses. But, there were dark clouds on the horizon. Thus, suddenly a striking change occurred in the doctor's way of life. In the past, he was full of life and cheerful and devoting himself to science, now he became melancholic and almost human. Now, this is a typically Freudian way of denigrating his “friend” frequently appearing in his letter describing Nathan’s death. Bizarrely, the author claimed that due to his melancholy, Nathan became almost human, as if he wasn’t human before. This is the same kind of nastiness that Freud showed in the letters to Martha, and Minna about his other “friends”, Schönberg and Paneth.
According to the correspondent, this is what being “human” meant to him: He avoided his parents, whom he always loved; he associated neither with his siblings nor with his friends and was unkind towards anyone who questioned him about the cause of his altered nature.
An explanation of Nathan’s problems followed: It was not a physical ailment that weighed him down, but a mental one - he had become mentally ill. Who else could have made this kind of diagnosis – not a journalist, for sure – if not the budding psychoanalyst, Dr. Freud?

Wedding qualms

Notably, the correspondent, just like Freud in his letter, recounted Nathan’s personal history. This is how he described the cause of Nathan’s problems.
He asked the daughter of a merchant for her hand. The marriage followed in the middle of the previous month. But there were problems, according to the correspondent. Already before the wedding Nathan believed that the marriage would not be a happy one, but unable to break his given word, he went to the altar.
If this statement is true, unless the author was close to Nathan, would’ve known such details. Or, maybe, just like Freud in his letter to Martha, the correspondent invented the whole story about the brewing troubles in Nathan’s marriage.
That wasn’t all since, as if he were present at Nathan’s wedding - or as if he was inventing the whole story - the correspondent revealed Nathan’s qualms about proceeding with the marriage ceremony.
About a quarter of an hour before the solemn ceremony, he looked at the clock and said with a sigh: "There's still a quarter of an hour to go, but I have to go through with it, I have given her my word."
The situation appears highly unlikely, unreal, and tragicomic even as if taken from a melodramatic Freudian kitsch melodrama. Apparently, the correspondent intimated that he was the one to whom Nathan confided his qualms. Or maybe the whole incident was only a figment of the author's bizarre mental setup?

Unhappy forced marriage

The correspondent assured that his information is correct explaining that, As reported by one whose credibility cannot be doubted, the girl agreed to marry him only at the request of parents of which he only later became aware of.
Apparently, the correspondent’s source, assuming there’s one, intimated that the “arranged” marriage couldn’t end well. Unsurprisingly, his predictions turned out to be true. When he returned from a short honeymoon on the 2nd [of September]. his relatives noticed that he felt unhappy and that an unspeakable pain gnawed at his heart.
So, now, also Nathan’s relatives have become the source of the correspondent's information.  Without a doubt, this a story of Shakespearean magnitude, as if it was modelled on the great Shakespeare's dramas. And Freud was an avid Shakespearean fan. Moreover, it tallies well with the claims contained in Freud's letter to Martha.
This is how Nathan’s unhappiness allegedly manifested itself, One statement he made about his situation most clearly shows his pain. "If my wife loved me, I would have loved her, too, and I would have been happy, but it turned out differently and that devastates me." As the alleged correspondent revealed, Those were his words after his return from the honeymoon, fourteen days after marriage.
Thus, if we believe the author, Nathan's marriage, just as Freud claimed in his letter, was falling apart.

Nathan’s suicide

Remarkably, the “correspondent” knew all about Nathan’s movements on the fateful day of his demise. This is what he reported: Last Thursday [on the 13th] at 8 o'clock in the morning he went to the outpatient clinic in the General Hospital and instructed the nurse to tell his brother, who is a doctor there and at the same time an assistant, that he should represent him at the surgery. Dr Nathan Weiss left here, attended a consultation and drove to Praterstrasse. There he was seen pacing in front of his parents' apartment. Apparently, he wanted to take farewell of the old people before ending his life but according to the source, it seems, he had no courage to appear before the parents. He died by hanging in the cabin of a bathing establishment. At noon he was found dead by the bath attendants, who had noticed that he had been in the cabin for too long.
An obvious question to ask is how the correspondent, unless he followed Nathan, could have known about all Nathan’s movements on the morning of his death. His actions, if true, definitely show that he wasn't mentally disturbed. Whether the description and purpose of the alleged visit to his parents is accurate is not known. 

The suicide note

This is how the correspondent recounted what happened once Nathan’s body was found.  On the table an open letter was found with the content mentioned at the beginning. The writing was legible and clear, the signature guided with a sure hand.
This is a strange claim, and the obvious question to ask is how he could have known that there was a letter and what the letter contained, what it looked like. It is highly doubtful that the police or the family would have shown the letter to him. Contrary to general belief, only about 25-30% of suicidal persons leave a letter behind. 

Father not a monster

Same day also the Morgen Post reported Nathan's death based apparently on the same correspondent’s article. Notably, contradicting Freud's claim about Nathan's father being a monster – Freud was a master of contradictions - the article stated that, In particular the father of the unfortunate ... well-respected man, is close to despair. Where the information originated wasn’t revealed.

Shared information

Also, other Viennese newspapers, Neuer Wiener Tagblatt, The Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung, as well as the Wiener Zeitung, recounted the same detailed story of Nathan’s life, marriage, unhappiness, and death. Without a doubt, the secret correspondent had sent the same letter detailing Nathan's story to several newspapers that printed it, without verifying its accuracy. Sending the article to several newspapers was a brilliant idea: in that way Freud was killing several birds with one stone, and making even more cash.

Continued in Weiss Part 3.