out any strict separation between work and leisure. Always he was observing and making
connections between these observations and the themes of his work. Then, too, the itiner-
ant Reich reveals—like the Reich of the 1927 Vienna demonstrations—his sensitive barom-
eter for group moods* His weathervane registered clearly the subdued, appeasing mood in
Europe, gripped by hopeful illusions, after Hitler’s rise to power and the Stalinization of
Russia, and before the Holocaust and World War II.
During the stopover Reich met Elsa, who had been visiting family and friends in
Berlin while he traveled. Not well known as a Communist, she could still move freely in
Germany. Together, they returned to Sweden. On arriving in Malmo in January 1934 they
took rooms in a boardinghouse, the atmosphere of which Reich described as frigid and
stuffy, with people staring intrusively at Elsa and himself^25. Both of them spoke German,
and, in addition, word may have gotten around that this unusual couple were not married.
Still, Reich thought, it was better than being in a concentration camp.
With the help of Reich’s students, Elsa commuted to Copenhagen, where she spent
several days a week continuing her dance work. Reich had ample leisure for study and writ-
ing in addition to seeing patients. He also had the opportunity to observe life in a relatively
small city, a new experience for him. He found Malmo to be a quite unpretentious place,
where “civilization could sleep in ‘law and order.’ ” At night adolescents walked to and fro
in the streets, separated by sex, and giggling at each other.
With his Swedish visa due to expire in late May and the authorities suspicious and
unwilling to renew it, Reich and Elsa decided to spend the summer of 1934 illegally in
Sletten, Denmark, where Reich lived under the pseudonym Peter Stein. They planned to set-
tle in Oslo in the fall.
Eva and Lore, who visited Reich and Elsa that summer, both recalled that Reich
was much happier in Denmark than he had been in Berlin. Eva, too, contrasted the gray,
tight atmosphere of her life in Vienna with the joyous summer in Denmark: “It was light,
fun, jolly. There were trips, eating out, people dancing, people coming and going fat Fenichel
and others.It was alive.”^26
In Denmark, Reich brought Eva more into his work than he had done in the past.
She happily recalled his discussing his current interests with her and permitting her to attend
informal seminars at a small congress he was organizing. Lore described this kind of behav-
ior on Reich’s part more negatively: he made no distinction between children and adults.
Eva, in particular, he treated in a way that was beyond her years, a criticism later vehement-
ly repeated by Annie and her friends.
Eva remembered a journey by car from Denmark to the Lucerne Congress in
Switzerland in August 1934. They camped out along the way through Germany, for Reich
loved camping. There were memories of dancing with Elsa, the smell of honeysuckle all
around them; of free bodies exercising, and of bathing in the nude; of Reich being tender
to Elsa in a way Eva rarely remembered his being with her mother. All these evocations of
what must have been a golden summer for Eva created antagonism in others. One person
mentioned with strong distaste that Reich sent his daughters a photo taken during the trip
15 : Personal Life: 1930-1934 191