The Ks: The Other Couple in the Case of Freud’s “Dora”

Hans and Peppina Zellenka featured prominently in Freud’s case study of the teenage girl “Dora,” in which they were anonymized as “the Ks.” Much has been written about Dora, but until recently, little has been known about the Ks. This article describes the upbringings of Hans and Peppina in the Jewish communities of Vienna and the South Tirol and their coming together at the health resort of Meran (where Peppina’s father was a bank director and where Peppina began an affair with Dora’s father). The article also describes the Ks’ move to Vienna in 1900 and their continuing involvement with the Bauers there. Hans Zellenka died in 1928. Dora escaped from Vienna in 1938, but Peppina remained and was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1942, at the age of seventy-two. She survived thirty months in the camp before being released. Peppina Zellenka died in Mayrhofen in 1949, having told no one of her involvement in the Dora story.