Lucy Glaser Merritt - July 8, 1991
Vienna
Um, it seems to me thatthings that one should ask about, about Vienna. Did you, did youkeep hearing about Sigmund Freud?
My mother was his student. She was uh, one of hisstudents. I mean, he was just starting out then. She graduated in 1915. AndFreud was just beginning so she took that as part of a course you know, justsomething to enrich her curriculum. So she knew him personally, as a teacher.Yeah. So we heard about him. And she felt he had some good points.
And Josef Breuer, didshe.
He was a ??? I don't know who that was.
Well, Freud's colleaguefor awhile.
Oh yeah.
She may have evenstudied with him.
Yeah. Well, she was active in, in the medicalgroup, so she probably knew many of 'em. And also they had a custom there thateach doctor had to serve free time for prostitutes. They had health cards, theyhad to get health cards. So one of things that she did was work with them andshe always felt that they were victimized by society. She did not. So I didn'tgrow up thinking of them as, as evil women like many of us did. I grew ofthinking of them with sympathy, that they were put into a ba...bad spot intheir life.
Was the city in Vienna.
Yeah.
in the war Europe.
Yeah.
How about other sort offamous Jewish cultural figures. Schnitzler? Arthur Schnitzler?
Well, we heard of him but we had no contact withhim. We read his works. Of course we had that stuff at home. We had a lot ofbooks at home for us to read.
Was the familymulti-lingual?
Uh, no.
The children
Well, my father spoke Czech as well as Germanbecause he was born in Prague and that-although he went to the Germany Universityin Prague and my grandmother wrote in gothic script. But they-that was-theywere truly Germanized. But he also knew Czech because they-that was a Czechpopulation and of course later it became Czechoslovakia. Now my mother spokePolish and Yiddish. My father considered Yiddish a lower form of life so then theynever.
So your mother's familywas from Poland then?
Well, she was from that part of Poland which hadbeen Austria when my parents.
Galicia?
Galicia, yeah. She was born in ??? Lemberg. Andthey both came to Vienna to study and that's where they met, University of Vienna.So she spoke Polish as well.
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