Erika Freeman
Erika Freeman | |
|---|---|
| Add a Photo | |
| Born | July 1, 1927 |
| Nationality | Austro-American |
| Citizenship | United States of American |
| Occupation | Psychoanalyst |
Erika Padan Freeman (born Erika Polesiuk on 1st of July, 1927 in Vienna) is an Austro-American psychoanalyst.
Life
Emigration and professional life
Erika Freeman was born in Vienna in 1927 and at the age of 12 had to flee as a Jew from the NNazi regime to the USA, to New York. There she studied at Columbia University and became a highly respected psychoanalyst. She advises many politicians, such as the former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, and becomes the mental support of various Hollywood legends, such as Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando and Woody Allen.
Eventually, Erika Freeman becomes a star herself: she is a permanent guest on the U.S. talk shows of the 1970s and is questioned about almost every event as a psychoanalyst. In her old age, she also gets closer to her old homeland Austria again and tirelessly campaigns against forgetting as a contemporary witness.
Her mother survived the persecution of Jews in Vienna in disguise, but died on March 12, 1945 during bombing. Her father was a Social Democrat and managed to escape from the Theresienstadt concentration camp to Sweden. He did not learn until 1946 that her daughter had survived.
At Columbia University the psychoanalyst and Sigmund Freud|Freud student Theodor Reik, who had escaped from Vienna, was one of her teachers. With Reik, she published a volume of interview transcripts on psychoanalysis. She received her doctorate with a dissertation on the position of the family in the kibbutz. Her aunt, the Zionist Ruth Klüger-Aliav, helped her get her professional start in New York. Polesiuk Hebrewized her name to Padan and married painter, graphic artist, sculptor and Calligraphy|calligrapher Paul Freeman (1929-1980) in 1954.
Commitment in Austria
For the Austrian remembrance project A Letter To The Stars, Freeman repeatedly traveled to Austria since 2007 and campaigned as a contemporary witness against forgetting.
Padan Freeman received the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art in 2017.
On January 2, 2020, Erika Freeman spoke with Markus Kupferblum on the FALTER radio podcast about miracles and love, her work as a psychoanalyst in New York and Hollywood, and her many companions.[1]
In 2022, she took Austrian citizenship. Since then, she has been a dual U.S.-Austrian citizen.[2] In November 2022, she donated several pieces of personal memorabilia to the :de:Haus_der_Geschichte_Österreich|Haus der Geschichte Österreich and was able to enter the usually barricaded balcony where Adolf Hitler announced the Anschluss in 1938.[3]
Publications
- Erika Freeman Padan: Psychological study of a family in a kibbutz in Israel. Dissertation Columbia University, 1964 Microfilm
- Erika Freeman: Insights; conversations with Theodor Reik. Englewood Cliffs, N.J. : Prentice-Hall, 1971
References
- ↑ ""Wunder geschehen – man weiß nur nicht wann" – #445". FALTER.at. Retrieved 2023-02-07.
- ↑ Nachrichten, Salzburger (2022-11-07). "NS-Vertriebe Erika Freeman betrat "Hitler-Balkon"". www.sn.at. Retrieved 2023-02-07.
- ↑ "NS-Vertriebene Erika Freeman auf dem Balkon der Hofburg: "Rache an Hitler"". DER STANDARD. Retrieved 2023-02-07.
External links
This article "Erika Freeman" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical. Articles taken from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be accessed on Wikipedia's Draft Namespace.