biography+of+erikson

= Biography =



Erik Erikson was born in Frankfurt, Germany on June 15, 1902 to Karla Abrahamsen, a young Jewish woman. Although married, she was living with her family at the time of the birth, having moved in after leaving her husband, Valdemar Salomonsen. A Jewish stockbroker, Salomonsen had fled the country four years earlier in connection with fraud and criminal ties. Karla Abrahamsen had engaged in an extramarital affair in his absence and become pregnant. She never disclosed the specific identity of her son's biological father, merely that he was of Danish extraction. She listed her son's surname as "Salomonsen". Four months later, word arrived that she was newly a widow; Valdemar Salomonsen was dead.

Abrahamsen trained as a nurse and eventually remarried, when young Erik was about three years old. Erik's new stepfather was his pediatrician, Theodor Homburger. Homburger, who insisted on being referred to as Erik's father, conferred his surname on the boy in 1908 and finally adopted him in 1911. Despite this it became apparent, with the arrival of three half sisters, that Erik held a very different place in the family as the adopted stepson. Throughout adolescence he increasingly identified as an outsider, both within and in the local community. He was teased at school for being Jewish, and at synagogue for being tall and blond. His stepfather refused to accept his intense artistic inclinations. [Reference 1]