von Sacher-Masoch’s life

 

 

 

Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch (1836-1895) was born in Lemberg, Austria (now Lviv, Ukraine) to the Lemberg chief of police, made chevalier by Emperor Francis I, and to Charlotte von Masoch, a Polish aristocrat. With the family lived also his paternal aunt, Countess Zenobia Sacher-Masoch, who he adored and who seems to have spanked him. In different versions of the story, she flogs her husband, after  he discovered her with a lover, and Leopold for witnessing it, and the main character in “Venus in furs” tells the story of an aunt that, with her daughter and a servant, tied his hands and feet and flogged him with a rod. This is supposed to have contributed in the development of his sexual preferences.

In 1848, his family moved to Prague, where he learned German, in which he wrote all his books. There, he attended school with excellent grades and a final prize for his school-leaving essay. His father made him study law, even when he was interested in writing and theater. He began his studies at the University of Prague, from where he moved to the University of Graz, where he graduated, as early as 19, as Doctor in Law in 1885. The next year he would become a “privatdocent” of German history at Gratz University.

In 1861 he had an affair with a woman 10 years older that him, Anna von Kottowitz, the wife of a physician, who divorced his husband, abandoning her children for moving with him. At his request, she dominated him, hitting him with her fists, birch rods and whips. She inspired “Die Geschiedene Frau, Passionsgeschichte eines Idealisten (The divorced woman, an idealist’s passion tale)”, one of his two books on what will be later known as masochism.

His next adventure was Fanny Pistor, which inspired “Venus in Furs”. With her, he signed on December 8, 1869 a slavery contract, which began:

“Herr Leopold von Sacher-Masoch gives his word of honor to Frau Pistor to become her slave and to obey unreservedly for six months every one of her desires and commands”

(we will reproduce it in full in a future “Contracts” section).

In real life (as in the novel), he posed as “Gregor”, her servant, and made with her a trip to Italy (Venice, in real life, Florence, in the novel) where they were not known and could enjoy their fantasies undiscovered. He traveled in third class, while she enjoyed a first class seat, both in real life and in the novel.
 

As in the novel Severin makes a painter picture Wanda in furs reclining with a whip in her hands, with Severin kneeling at her feet, the real couple was photographed in almost the same pose, including even the whip. Also a third character, in real life an Italian actor, in the novel a Greek cavalry officer, is included as Fanny’s lover, for inspiring jealousy, and inflaming the passion among them. Only, at the end, their relationship just faded away, without the novel’s dramatic ending.

In 1887, already famous as a writer and translated to many languages, he traveled to Paris, where he was well received, and admired by Zola, Ibsen and Hugo, with the prestigious "Revue de Deux Mondes" publishing several articles on him

The next affaire was not so satisfactory. He engaged in correspondence with a woman who called herself “Wanda von Dunajew” (the name of the “Venus” heroin). She wanted to recover some compromising letters that a friend of hers had written jokingly to Leopold.

 

After some interchange, he refused to give the letters without meeting his correspondent. They met, and, in his normal way of fantasizing and making everything a romantic adventure, as much in real life as in his writings, he supposed that she was a noblewoman, maybe a married Russian countess, disguised as a commoner.

 

She was not.

 

Her real name was Angelika Aurora  Rümelin, (even when she afterwards changed her name legally to Wanda), born in Graz in 1845 and, at 27, she lived with her mother, earning her life as a glove maker. The relationship was maintained in all its mystery, until they had a child, who died at birth, and decided to marry in 1893. It was a disillusion for both. She discovered that he had a chimerical and illusory way of seeing the world, and that he wanted to be dominated and flogged in real life. He discovered that she was no countess, but worst, that she was not the dominant woman he thought she was. They had different expectations. She wanted to marry an important man to live a normal life. He wanted to marry the heroin of his real life’s novel. Even when Wanda, in her book “Confessions of Wanda von Sacher-Masoch”, that is mostly about the years she lived with him, complains bitterly of how he forced her fantasies on her, she overlooks that she had encouraged them when using Wanda’s name in their early correspondence.

But yes, he forced his fantasies on her. He said that all his feminine characters tended to be dominant and cruel women, and the only way he could create different characters and continue selling books (which he did for a living) was by living his obsessions at home. She was made to wear furs and whip him, and he even forced her to infidelity, which she avoided many times until finally agreeing, which was the final humiliation that carried them to separation.

 

Even if witty and intelligent, she was a woman of little education, who had to indulge in his fantasies because she depended on him for her and their three children (one, a girl from a former Leopold’s relationship) lodging and feeding. The relationship cooled, and he was driven to relate to Hulda Meister, who was working for him as a secretary and translator. Wanda went to live in Paris with a journalist, named Rosenthal.

In 1883 Leopold and Hulda settled in Lindheim, a village in Germany near the Taunus, where he was going to live for the rest of his life. After a long and bitter legal battle with his former wife, he got the divorce and married Hulda. They had two children. She cared for him with a maternal devotion, as he was, apart from his sexual preferences, a caring and sympathetic man, and a loving father very attached to his children (this was accepted even by Wanda).

When he reached his 50’s his mental health begun to decline, and by 1895 he had became violent and suffered delusions. He officially died in Lindheim, Hesse, on March 3, 1895. Some historians say that he was publicly declared dead, but was moved to an asylum in Mannheim, where he died in 1905.
 

 

Published: 11/02/05