Nathan Weiss, the only subject of a longest "Brautbrief"from Sigmund Freud (on Freud's 75th death anniversary
Abstract
The letter of September 16, 1883 from Sigmund Freud to Martha Bernays, a longest of all letters to his fiancée (Brautbriefe), has been written immediately after the funeral of Freud's colleague Nathan Weiss (1851-1883), a native from Velké Meziříčí in Moravia which is now a part of the Czech Republic. A son of Isaak Hirsch Weiss, a poor local merchant who became a lecturer in the bet ha-midrash in Vienna, Nathan studied medicine there, earning his doctorate in 1874.
He worked as secondary physician at the Vienna General Hospital and in 1879 habilitated for internal medicine. His clinic as well as research work, however, focused on neurological problems; in 1881 he showed a causal relationship between tetany and the removal of goitre, described the "Weiss' sign" and pioneered systematic research of the spinal cord, oblongata and basal ganglia.
In 1883, at the age of 32, he was appointed head of the outpatient clinic for electrotherapy and nervous diseases at Vienna General Hospital, but on September 13, 1883, ten days after returning from the honeymoon, he committed suicide. In the "Brautbrief" of September 16, 1883 his stunned friend Sigmund Freud aims for an impartial explanation of Nathan's fatal step.