---
title: "Freud family"
chunk: 3/4
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freud_family"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:05:31.798248+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

After Sigmund Freud's death in 1939, Martha and Anna Freud made their home available to relatives and friends fleeing the Nazi occupation of Europe. In 1941, following the death of Martha's sister, Minna, Dorothy Burlingham (1891–1979) became a permanent member of the household. From their first meeting in Vienna in 1925, Anna and Dorothy developed "intimate relations that closely resembled those of lesbians", although Anna "categorically denied the existence of a sexual relationship". Dorothy had been a patient of Freud's and her four children, Bob, Mary (Mabbie), Katrina, and Michael, were among the first of Anna's after she had begun her own psychoanalytic practice. During and after the war they collaborated in establishing the Hampstead War Nursery that provided therapy and residential care for children whose lives had been disrupted by the war. Their work laid the foundations for the post-war Hampstead Child Therapy Course and Clinic, founded in 1952 (later renamed the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families).
Martin and Walter Freud were both interned in 1940 as enemy aliens. Following a change in government policy on internment, both were subsequently recruited to the Pioneer Corps. After the war, denied recognition as a (Vienna-trained) lawyer by the British legal profession, Martin Freud ran a tobacconist shop in Bloomsbury. His autobiographical memoir of Freud family life in Vienna, Glory Reflected: Sigmund Freud - the Man and Father, was published in 1957. His sister, Mathilde Höllischer, opened 'Robell', a women's fashion store on Baker Street.
Walter Freud was deported to an internment camp in New South Wales, Australia. On his return to England in 1941 he was recruited to the Pioneer Corps and subsequently to the SOE. In April 1945 he was parachuted behind enemy lines in Austria. Advised to change his name in case of capture, he refused, declaring : "I want the Germans to know a Freud is coming back". He narrowly survived separation from his comrades and took the leading role in securing the surrender of the strategically important Zeltweg aerodrome in southern Austria. When the war ended he was assigned to war crimes investigation work in Germany. Given the fate of his great aunts and maternal grandmother at the hands of the Nazis, he was particularly pleased to help secure the prosecution of directors of the firm that supplied Zyklon B gas to the concentration camps, two of whom were executed for war crimes. In 1946, he left the army with the rank of major. The following year he was granted British citizenship and resumed a career as an industrial chemist.
Retribution for the murder of his aunts was also a concern for Alexander Freud's son, Harry. He arrived in post-war Vienna as a U.S. army officer to investigate the circumstances of their deportation and helped track down and bring before the courts Anton Sauerwald, the Nazi commissar charged with the supervision of the Freuds' assets. Sauerwald gained early release from prison in 1947 when, at the request of his wife, Anna Freud intervened on his behalf, revealing that he had, by concealing evidence of Freud's Swiss bank account, "used his office as our appointed commissar in such a manner as to protect my father".
Ernst Freud and his three sons, Stephan, Clement and Lucian, were spared the ordeal of internment but only through the intervention of his father's close friend and colleague Princess Marie Bonaparte.  His numerous attempts to secure naturalisation status for the family since their arrival in the UK in 1933 had met without success and, with preparations for war in place, by 1939 the government had banned all German citizens from the process. Bonaparte was in London to visit his ailing father who advised her of the problem. She took advantage of her royal family connections to persuade her relative, Prince George, Duke of Kent, to intervene with the immigration authorities and this secured the prompt issue of naturalisation documentation in September 1939. Stephan and Clement Freud served in the army during the war. Lucian gained exemption from conscription due to ill-health. He had voluntarily enlisted into the Merchant Navy in 1941 and was discharged on his return from a trans-Atlantic crossing in a poor physical state.
After the war Ernst resumed his architectural practice, Stephan worked in publishing and subsequently ran a hardware store near Baker Street,  Lucian became well known as an artist, Clement as a broadcaster, journalist and MP. Ernst took over management of the copyright negotiations for the publishing of his father's works and, after retiring from his architectural practice, he worked on arrangements for publishing his father's voluminous correspondence in collaboration with Anna Freud. In accordance with Freud's wishes his grandchildren were the beneficiaries of royalties from his published works. Ernst Freud had also begun the adoption of the Suffolk seaside village of Walberswick as a favoured holiday destination for the Freuds, purchasing and renovating a property there in 1938. A succession of Freuds purchased holiday homes there, including Anna and Clement Freud, his daughter Emma Freud and her cousin Esther Freud.

== Sigmund Freud's children and descendants ==

 
Sigmund Freud married Martha Bernays (1861–1951) in 1886. Martha was born in Hamburg, the daughter of Berman Bernays (1826–1879), a businessman, and Emmeline Philipp (1830–1910). Her grandfather, Isaac Bernays (1792–1849), was a Chief Rabbi of Hamburg. Two of her uncles were prominent academics: Jakob Bernays (1824–1881) was a professor of classics at the University of Bonn; Michael Bernays (1834–1897) was a professor of German literature at LMU Munich. In 1869, the Bernays family moved to Vienna where Berman Bernays became secretary to the economist Lorenz von Stein. After his sudden death in 1879, his post was taken over by his son Eli while Martha and her mother moved back to Hamburg. In 1883, Eli married Freud's oldest sister Anna. Martha's sister, Minna Bernays (1865–1941), became a permanent member of the Freud household after the death of her fiancé in 1895.
Sigmund and Martha Freud had six children and eight grandchildren: