Poisoning Weiss #3

After the crime, they [the organized serial killers] often follow the progress (or non-progress) of the investigation in the news media.
Ressler, Robert K; Shachtman, Tom, Whoever fights monsters, 1992, p. 139.

In his letter to his fiancé about the “suicide” of Nathan Weiss, Freud referenced the newspapers’ (plural) descriptions of what had happened. As Freud informed his fiancé, after the funeral,
Both the widow and his father have issued special mourning announcements. The papers print two interpretations, both false, one from her family, the other from his.
Apparently, Freud’s story of the funeral that he recounted to his fiancé wasn’t compatible with either of the "interpretations" published by the newspapers.
As a matter of fact, Nathan’s death was the subject of several articles in the Viennese newspapers, not only because of Nathan’s position in the medical world, but also because the newspapers were provided with extensive reports containing information not only about the suicide but also about Nathan’s personal life from someone in Nathan’s circle of acquaintances. Who could that talented writer - providing this inside information - have been? 

September 15, 1883

The earliest newspaper report of Nathan's death appeared two days after his demise, in the Neue Freie Presse, on September 15, 1883. The article stated:
In the Wiener Medicinische Wochenschrift, of the 14th, we read that,
A terrifying news shook the medical circles of Vienna today - the news of the unexpected death of lecturer Dr. Nathan Weiss. Dr Weiss was a very respected name in the field of electrotherapy and neuropathology; 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" works ... He was at a beginning of a brilliant career when a shattering fate ended his life.
But was it the fate, or was it murder?’

September 16, 1883

On 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 very successful, young doctor commits a suicide in the middle of the day, and in a public bathhouse.
Notably, a couple of the articles 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 other 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 denigrating the dead man.

Content of suicide letter

This is how Die Presse, in the 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 is, of course, how could, the author of the article, have known that there were suicide letters and, even more remarkably, what was in the suicide letters. As a matter of course, suicide letters are not being made accessible to the public or journalists for that matter. Moreover, Freud claimed that Nathan asked the police not to provide the content of the letters to the press. So, unless he invented the whole story, how could the journalist have known what was in them?

Corresp. Wilh.

As the article revealed, their source of inside information was the anonymous  Corresp. Wilh. Remarkably, the person providing the information about Nathan uses the English spelling in his moniker rather than the short form of the German word, “Korrespondent”.
A case in point: Freud was a dedicated anglophile, and thus likely to use the English word, as a kind of mad clue to identify of the writer. In fact, on occasion, Freud liked to insert English words in the letters to Martha, and his boyfriend Fliess.

Contributor

As a matter of fact, Freud was not only reading Viennese newspapers; he was also writing articles for these 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 it was Freud that was the secret correspondent even more plausible. (N.B. On this day, the Neue Freie Presse didn't print any information about Nathan.)

Melancholia

As the article recounted,
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. This was a spiteful claim; so Nathan became almost human, as if he wasn’t human before. As a matter of fact, this is the same kind of nastiness, that Freud showed in the letters to Martha and Minna, about his former “friend”, Schönberg.
This is what being “human” meant according to the correspondent:
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 state of mind 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, knew and recounted Nathan’s personal history. This is how he described the causes of Nathan’s problems.
He asked a girl, 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. Again, assuming this is not a fictitious account, unless the author was close to Nathan, he would’ve known such details. Or, maybe, just like Freud in his letter to Martha, he 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, 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, comical even, as if taken from a melodramatic Freudian kitsch melodrama. Apparently, the correspondent intimated that he was the one in whom Nathan confided his qualms.

Unhappy forced marriage

This is how the correspondent assured the readers that his information is correct: 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. Sadly, 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 became involved in the unrequited love story.
This is how allegedly Nathan’s unhappiness 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." And the correspondent revealed, Those were his words after his return from the honeymoon, fourteen days after marriage.

The suicide note

According to the correspondent,
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.
Considering that only one in three suicidal persons leave a letter behind, an obvious question to ask is how the correspondent could have known that there was a letter at all, and what it contained.

Who was Corresp. Wilh.?

Also, other Viennese newspapers, Neues Wiener Tagblatt, Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung, as well as Neue Freie Presse, recounted the same detailed story of Nathan’s life, marriage, unhappiness, and death. Apparently, the secret correspondent had sent the same letter detailing Nathan's story to several newspapers that printed it without verifying its accuracy.
So who was the secret correspondent Wilh.? Taking into account the article's style, and content, and its uncanny likeness to Freud's letter to Martha, if appears indisputable that it was Freud who was hiding - as so often, in other cases (for example in the Screen Memories essay) - behind the anonymous moniker of "Corresp. Wilh.".

Continued in Weiss Part 4.