19 : Personal Life and Relations with Colleagues: 1934-1939The three years between the fall of 1934 and the fall of 1937 were among the hap-
piest in Reich’s life. His relationship with Elsa Lindenberg continued to be a very satisfying
one. Reich was supportive of Elsa’s work, acting on his belief in marital partners’ exercising
their independence. Elsa, whose political interests were stronger than Reich’s at thisparticu-
lar time, was an occasional choreographer for a “Red Review” put on by a young workers’
group. Once when Reich came to a rehearsal and helped with the drilling of a Prussian
goose-step routine, Elsa recalled the warm, direct way he had with these young workers, and
how everybody enjoyed a big party afterward^1.
Reich and Annie were divorced in late 1934. Reich had considered Elsa to be his
wife in all but the legal sense for some time, at least since she joined him in Copenhagen in
May 1933. He was reluctant to take the step of marriage with Elsa, in part because of the
potential for bitter harassment in the case of a subsequent divorce, in part because he want-
ed to be very certain that their personal relationship harmonized with his rapidly develop-
ing work.
In the early Oslo years at least, there was less reluctance on Elsa’s part. When she
became pregnant in 1935, she was overjoyed to have a child with Willy. Initially, he too was
thrilled by the prospect and bought clothes and furniture for the coming infant. But then
doubts set in. He felt that the future of his work was too unsettled to provide the right kind
ofenvironment for a child.To Elsa’s great sorrow, he insisted on an abortion^2 .They decid-
ed to have the abortion in Berlin, where Edith Jacobson, still practicing analysis and now
also in the German resistance movement against Hitler, helped arrange the illegal operation.
During this period,Reich’s relations with his colleagues were also harmonious. The
Norwegian group was an exceptionally lively one. Both Sigurd and Nic Hoel, and people like
Arnulf Overland, poet laureate of Norway, and August Lange, a well-known sociologist,
were friends as well as colleagues. There were parties, skiing vacations, and informal meet-
ings, together with courses and the diverse work collaborations Reich usually had with his
associates.In the summer of1935 a kind of summer school developed, with seminars and
lectures; mostly friends, students, and assistants gathered informally in the Norwegian coun-
tryside. As Use Ollendorff has noted:
The atmosphere was casual, in great contrast to the much more formal climate that
was to prevail in the American organization later on. ... In my request for information in
Scandinavia,I was struck again and again by the way people referred to Reich as Willy. No
one in America, except his closest family, and some of his old friends from Austria, ever
232 Myron SharafFury On Earth