Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

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Leopold Ritter<ref>Template:German title</ref> von Sacher-Masoch (Template:IPA; 27 January 1836 – 9 March 1895) was an Austrian nobleman, writer and journalist, who gained renown for his romantic stories of Galician life. The term masochism is derived from his name, invented by his contemporary, the Austrian psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing. Masoch did not approve of this use of his name.<ref>Alison M. Moore, Sexual Myths of Modernity: Sadism, Masochism and Historical Teleology, (Lexington Books, 2016) Template:ISBN Template:Page needed</ref>

During his lifetime, Sacher-Masoch was well known as a man of letters, in particular a utopian thinker who espoused socialist and humanist ideals in his fiction and non-fiction. Most of his works remain untranslated into English.

Biography

Early life and education

Von Sacher-Masoch was born in the city of Lemberg, the capital of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria (now Lviv, Ukraine), at the time a province of the Austrian Empire, into the Roman Catholic family. His parents were an Austrian civil servant,<ref>"City in Ukraine Tied to Masochism Finds Link Painful, Sure, but Some Like It" Template:Webarchive by Andrew Higgins, The New York Times, 14 November 2014</ref> Leopold Johann Nepomuk Ritter von Sacher, and Charlotte Josepha von Masoch, a Ukrainian noblewoman.<ref>The cultural legacy of Sacher-Masoch Template:Webarchive Template:Dubious Nataliya Kosmolinska and Yury Okhrimenko</ref> The father later combined his surname with his wife's von Masoch, at the request of her family (she was the last of the line). Von Sacher served as a Commissioner of the Imperial Police Forces in Lemberg, and he was recognised with a new title of Austrian nobility as Sacher-Masoch awarded by the Austrian Emperor.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite book</ref>

Leopold studied law, history and mathematics at Graz University (where he obtained a doctorate in history in 1856), and after graduating he became a lecturer there.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Galician storyteller

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Masoch in the 1860s

His early, non-fictional publications dealt mostly with Austrian history. At the same time, Masoch turned to the folklore and culture of his homeland, Galicia. Soon he abandoned lecturing and became a free man of letters. Within a decade his short stories and novels prevailed over his historical non-fiction works, though historical themes continued to imbue his fiction.<ref name=":0" />

Panslavist ideas were prevalent in Masoch's literary work, and he found a particular interest in depicting picturesque types among the various ethnicities that inhabited Galicia. From the 1860s to the 1880s he published a number of volumes of Jewish Short Stories, Polish Short Stories, Galician Short Stories, German Court Stories and Russian Court Stories.

The Legacy of Cain

In 1869, Sacher-Masoch conceived a grandiose series of short stories under the collective title Legacy of Cain that would represent the author's aesthetic Weltanschauung (worldview). The cycle opened with the manifesto The Wanderer that brought out misogynist themes that became peculiar to Masoch's writings. Of the six planned volumes, only the first two were ever completed. By the middle of the 1880s, Masoch abandoned the Legacy of Cain. Nevertheless, the published volumes of the series included Masoch's best-known stories, and of them, Venus in Furs (published 1870) is the most famous today. The novella expressed Sacher-Masoch's fantasies and fetishes (especially for dominant women wearing fur). He did his best to live out his fantasies with his mistresses and wives. In 1873 he married Angelika Aurora von Rümelin.

Private life and inspiration for Venus in Furs

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Fanny Pistor and Sacher-Masoch

Fanny Pistor was an emerging literary writer. She met Sacher-Masoch after she contacted him, under the assumed name and fictitious title of Baroness Bogdanoff, for suggestions on improving her writing to make it suitable for publication. She was the inspiration for Venus im Pelz (Venus in Furs). The erotic novel spawned the word masochism.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>

Later years

In 1874, Masoch wrote the novel Die Ideale unserer Zeit (The Ideals of Our Time), an attempt to give a portrait of German society during its Gründerzeit period.<ref>Template:Cite web Template:Dead link</ref>

In his late fifties, his mental health began to deteriorate, and he spent the last years of his life under psychiatric care. According to official reports, he died in Lindheim in 1895. (Lindheim, at that time near Altenstadt, was incorporated into the municipality of Altenstadt in 1971.) It is also claimed that Masoch died in an asylum in Mannheim in 1905.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Sacher-Masoch is the great-great-uncle, through her Austrian-born mother Eva von Sacher-Masoch, Baroness Erisso, of English Rock star and film actress Marianne Faithfull.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Masochism

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A Sacher-Masoch compilation published in 1901

The term masochism was coined in 1886 by the Austrian psychiatrist Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing (1840–1902) in his book Psychopathia Sexualis:

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Sacher-Masoch was not pleased with Krafft-Ebing's assertions. Nevertheless, details of Masoch's private life were obscure until Aurora von Rümelin's memoirs, Meine Lebensbeichte (My Life Confession; 1906), were published in Berlin under the pseudonym Wanda v. Dunajew (the name of a leading character in his Venus in Furs). The following year, a French translation, Confession de ma vie (1907) by "Wanda von Sacher-Masoch", was printed in Paris by Mercure de France. An English translation of the French edition was published as The Confessions of Wanda von Sacher-Masoch (1991) by RE/Search Publications.

Selected bibliography

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1858 A Galician Story 1846
1865 Kaunitz
1866 Don Juan of Kolomiya
1867 The Last King of Hungary
1870 The Divorcee
1870 Legacy of Cain Vol. 1: Love (includes his most famous work, Venus in Furs)
1872 Faux Ermine
1873 Female Sultan
1873 The Messalinas of Vienna
1873–74 Russian Court Stories: 4 Vols.
1873–77 Viennese Court Stories: 2 Vols.
1874/76 Template:Lang [Love Stories from Several Centuries], 3 volumes, includes "Template:Lang" ("Bloody Wedding in Kyiv"), "Ariella"
1874 Die Ideale unserer Zeit [The Ideals of Our Time]<ref>Die Ideale unserer Zeit Template:Webarchive, novel in four books, Vienna 1874 (facsimile at Austrian National Library)</ref>
1875 Galician Stories
1877 The Man Without Prejudice
1877 Legacy of Cain. Vol. 2: Property
1878 The New Hiob
1878 Jewish Stories
1878 The Republic of Women's Enemies
1879 Silhouettes
1881 New Jewish Stories
1883 Template:Lang (The Mother of God)
1886 Eternal Youth
1886 Stories from Polish Ghetto
1886 Little Mysteries of World History
1886 Bloody Wedding in Kyiv'<ref>Template:Cite book (about Olga of Kiev)</ref>
1887 Polish Stories
1890 The Serpent in Paradise
1891 The Lonesome
1894 Love Stories
1898 Entre nous
1900 Catherina II
1901 Afrikas Semiramis
1907 Fierce Women

Notes

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External links

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Template:Gutenberg author
- Venus in Furs Template:Webarchive from Project Gutenberg
- The Bookbinder of Hort Template:Webarchive, part of an anthology, Stories by Foreign Authors
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The Letawitza Template:Webarchive
The Independent Saturday, 23 July 1994 Template:Webarchive
Stanislav Tsalyk: Don Juan of Lviv

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