THE best preface to this journal written by a young girl belonging to the upper middle class is a letter by Sigmund Freud dated April 27, 1915, a letter wherein the distinguished Viennese psychologist testifies to the permanent value of the document: “This diary is a gem. Never before, I believe, has anything been written enabling us to see so clearly into the soul of a young girl, belonging to our social and cultural stratum, during the years of puberal development. We are shown how the sentime

FIRST YEAR July 12, 19 . . . Hella and I are writing a diary. We both agreed that when we went to the high school we would write a diary every day. Dora keeps a diary too, but she gets furious if I look at it. I call Helene “Hella,” and she calls me “Rita;” Helene and Grete are so vulgar. Dora has taken to calling herself “Thea,” but I go on calling her “Dora.” She says that little children (she means me and Hella) ought not to keep a diary. She says they will write such a lot of nonsense. No mo

SECOND YEAR August 1st. It was awfully jolly on my birthday. We drove to Glashutte where it is lovely; there we cooked our own dinner in the inn for the landlady was ill and so was the cook. On one’s birthday everyone is always so nice to one. What I like most of all is the Ebeseder paint-box, and the book too. But I never have any time to read. Hella sent me a lovely picture: Maternal Happiness, a dachshund with two puppies, simply sweet. When I go home I shall hang it up near the door over the

THIRD YEAR July 31st. Yesterday was my birthday, the thirteenth. Mother gave me a clock with a luminous dial which I wanted for my night-table. Of course that is chiefly of use during the long winter nights; embroidered collars; from Father, A Bad Boy’s Diary, which one of the nurses lent Hella when she was in hospital; it’s such a delightfully funny book, but Father says it’s stupid because no boy could have written all that, a new racquet with a leather case, an awfully fine one, a Sirk, and t

LAST HALF-YEAR July 30th. Thank goodness this is my 14th!!! birthday; Olga thought that I was 16 or at least 15; but I said: No thank you; to look like 16 is quite agreeable to me, but I should not like to be 16, for after all how long is one young, only 2 or 3 years at most. But as to feeling different, as Hella said she did, I really can’t notice anything of the kind; I am merely delighted that no one, not even Dora, can now call me a child . I do detest the word “child,” except when Mother us

Rita’s joyful expectations of tobogganing among glistening snow-clad hills, remained unfulfilled. The rude hand of fate was thrust into the lives of the two sisters. On January 29th their father, suddenly struck down with paralysis, was brought home in an ambulance, and died in a few hours without recovering consciousness. Torn from the sheltering and affectionate atmosphere of home, separated from her most intimate friend, the young orphan had to struggle for peace of soul in the isolation of a