“Yesterday morning our dear lovely Sophie died from galloping influenza and pneumonia. We learned of it at noon from a telephone conversation with Minna in Reichenhall. Oli and Ernst have left Berlin to be with Max. Robert and Mathilde are leaving on the twenty-ninth to try and assist the poor bereaved man. Martha is too upset; one couldn’t let her undertake the journey, and in any case she wouldn’t have found Sophie alive.

She is the first of our children we have to outlive. What Max will do, what will happen to the children, we of course don’t know as yet.”

Sigmund Freud to his mother Amalia, 26 January 1920