Matilda Brunswick Stewart

Matilda Brunswick Stewart, L.C.S.W. Matilda (Til) Brunswick Stewart, born on March 6, 1929, died peacefully at home in
Berkeley on May 26 2025.

Til was a very accomplished, caring, lively, and intelligent woman. She possessed an
understated elegance and a wry sense of humor, balanced by strong political and
aesthetic sensibilities.

Though born in New York City, Til spent most of the first nine years of her childhood in
Vienna with her parents Mark Brunswick, a composer/conductor, and Ruth MackBrunswick, a psychiatrist. They moved to Vienna for Ruth to study psychoanalysis with
Freud, who was her analyst and teacher.

Til’s family were close friends with the Freuds, and she was named after their eldest
daughter. Advice from Anna Freud led to the hiring of Hilde Grossman as a nanny for
Til. Hilde, along with the family’s chauffeur Alois Prinnegg (Minga) who later married
Hilde, became pivotal in raising her and Til considered Hilde and Minga to be second
parents. She stayed in touch with them until their deaths many years later.

Til attended Reed College and then graduated in 1956 from S.F. State. There she
recognized that she was interested in social work, both as a therapeutic and practical
profession. She attained an M.S.W. from U.C. Berkeley in 1958.

Til worked as a social worker in the Out-patient Department of Psychiatry at Mount Zion
Hospital in its heyday during the 1960s and 70s. She was devoted to her patients, as
well as the many clinicians she supervised there and later in her private practice.

In 1968 she married Charles Thomas Stewart, M.D. (Charlie), a child psychiatrist, and
author of three Jungian books. They initially lived in San Francisco with their comingled four cat family. Eventually they bought their beautiful garden home overlooking
the bay in the Berkeley Hills.

Til was characteristically understated about her fascinating life and in later years wrote
her memoirs, Til the Present, a book full of the ups and downs and complicated
relationships of her family.

Til’s mother Ruth, became a psychiatrist when few women were able to attain M.D.s.
She became one of the noted early figures in psychoanalysis, developing important
ideas about the pre-oedipal period, psychosis, and the mother-child relationship.

Ruth’s father, Julian Mack was a noted judge, who championed the creation of the
juvenile justice system thus recognizing that juvenile offenders should not be treated as
adults. Til admired his integrity, values, and ethics tremendously.

One of Ruth’s best friends was Princess Maria Bonaparte, also an early psychoanalyst,
who was instrumental in getting Freud out of Vienna to London during the Nazi
occupation of Austria.

The WWII years were a turmoil for Til. In 1938, Til’s family was able to leave Vienna
because they were American citizens. They returned to New York city, leaving Hilda and
Minga behind. Her parents then divorced in 1945, and her mother died the following
year.

Til was a lifelong reader and learner, enjoying her many friends who were authors, and
psychotherapists. She was warmly involved in the lives of her dear friends Jean and
Mary, along with their now adult children.

Til was able to live out her final years at Til and Charlie’s lovely home in North Berkeley, cared for by fond and devoted home health aides, Julie Reduta, Artemio Agustin (Jun)
and Ludivina Gajultos. Her beloved cat Bella and Julie’s dog Macho kept her smiling
and her lap warm.

She is survived by her second cousins Louise, Debby, and Judy Rosenkrantz, as well
as her, her nephew Daniel Stewart, niece Sarah Hawklyn, and Sarah’s sons Benjamin
and Scott.

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