Ritter Leopold von Sacher Masoch Jewish stories. Life of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (Photo)

German

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch(German) Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch ; January 27, Lemberg (now Lviv) - March 9, Frankfurt am Main or Lindheim (German)Russian) - Austrian writer.

Biography

early years

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch was born on January 27, 1836 in Lemberg (the modern name of Lvov to the events described) in the Roman Catholic family of the chief of police of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, Leopold von Sacher. His father's ancestors were Spaniards who settled in Prague in the 16th century and Bohemian Germans.

The work of Sacher-Masoch belongs to an era when, against the backdrop of the flourishing of industry, the splendor of life of the new bourgeoisie and the decline of the countryside, the intelligentsia lived in a world where idealization was combined rural life with materialistic and epicurean tendencies, and sensuality and love became the center and goal human life. The experiences of Sacher-Masoch’s personal life, who received pathological sexual pleasure from submission to physical and emotional violence from women, are reflected in his works. The novels “The Divorced Woman” () and “Venus in Furs” () are almost autobiographical in nature (the basis for “The Divorced Woman” was the experience and suffering from the affair with Anna von Kottwitz, and “Venus in Furs” the writer was inspired by the intrigue with Fanny von Pistor).

The theme of a despotic woman’s abuse of a weak man also constantly arises in historical works Sacher-Masoch and over time becomes so expressive that in 1886 the Viennese psychologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing calls sexual pathology, which is characterized by receiving pleasure from pain and submission, masochism.

The works of Sacher-Masoch were translated into many European languages ​​and published large editions. It was especially popular in France thanks to the translations and commentaries of Teresa Bentson. His work was highly appreciated by Emile Zola, Gustave Flaubert, Alphonse Daudet, Alexandre Dumas the father and Alexandre Dumas the son. In 1886, Sacher-Masoch received the Order of the Legion of Honor from the hands of the French President.

Last years Sacher-Masoch spent his life in the German village of Lindheim in Hesse, where he died on March 9, 1895. The extraordinary nature of his fate did not end there either - as they say, the urn with his ashes was destroyed by a fire in 1929. The writer's son, Roman, was mobilized in 1914, was captured by Russians in November, and died in a Kiev military hospital of typhus in March 1915.

Bibliography

Memory

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Notes

Literature

• = Ungarns Untergang und Maria von Oesterreich. - Leipzig: T.O. Weigel, 1862.
• Sacher-Masoch, Leopold Ritter von.= Galizische Geschichten. - Bern: Georg Frobeen, 1877.
• Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. ABC-classics (pocket-book) // = Venus in furs. - ABC-classics, 2007. - 224 p. - ISBN 9785352021651.

Links

• // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - St. Petersburg. , 1890-1907.
• in the library of Maxim Moshkov
• in the Encyclopedia of Sex
• // Sacher-Masoch L. von. Mardona: A novel. - St. Petersburg: ABC-classics, 2005, p. 5-20

Excerpt characterizing Sacher-Masoch, Leopold von

The rest of the infantry hurried across the bridge, forming a funnel at the entrance. Finally, all the carts passed, the crush became less, and the last battalion entered the bridge. Only the hussars of Denisov's squadron remained on the other side of the bridge against the enemy. The enemy, visible in the distance from the opposite mountain, from below, from the bridge, was not yet visible, since from the hollow along which the river flowed, the horizon ended at the opposite elevation no more than half a mile away. Ahead there was a desert, along which here and there groups of our traveling Cossacks were moving. Suddenly, on the opposite hill of the road, troops in blue hoods and artillery appeared. These were the French. The Cossack patrol trotted away downhill. All the officers and men of Denisov’s squadron, although they tried to talk about outsiders and look around, did not stop thinking only about what was there on the mountain, and constantly peered at the spots on the horizon, which they recognized as enemy troops. The weather cleared again in the afternoon, the sun set brightly over the Danube and the dark mountains surrounding it. It was quiet, and from that mountain the sounds of horns and screams of the enemy could occasionally be heard. There was no one between the squadron and the enemies, except for small patrols. An empty space, three hundred fathoms, separated them from him. The enemy stopped shooting, and the more clearly one felt that strict, menacing, impregnable and elusive line that separates the two enemy troops.
“One step beyond this line, reminiscent of the line separating the living from the dead, and - the unknown of suffering and death. And what's there? who's there? there, beyond this field, and the tree, and the roof illuminated by the sun? Nobody knows, and I want to know; and it’s scary to cross this line, and you want to cross it; and you know that sooner or later you will have to cross it and find out what is there on the other side of the line, just as it is inevitable to find out what is there on the other side of death. And he himself is strong, healthy, cheerful and irritated, and surrounded by such healthy and irritably animated people.” So, even if he doesn’t think, every person who is in sight of the enemy feels it, and this feeling gives a special shine and joyful sharpness of impressions to everything that happens in these minutes.
The smoke of a shot appeared on the enemy’s hill, and the cannonball, whistling, flew over the heads of the hussar squadron. The officers standing together went to their places. The hussars carefully began to straighten out their horses. Everything in the squadron fell silent. Everyone looked ahead at the enemy and at the squadron commander, waiting for a command. Another, third cannonball flew by. It is obvious that they were shooting at the hussars; but the cannonball, whistling evenly quickly, flew over the heads of the hussars and struck somewhere behind. The hussars did not look back, but at every sound of a flying cannonball, as if on command, the entire squadron with its monotonously varied faces, holding back its breath while the cannonball flew, rose in its stirrups and fell again. The soldiers, without turning their heads, glanced sideways at each other, curiously looking for the impression of their comrade. On every face, from Denisov to the bugler, one common feature struggle, irritation and excitement. The sergeant frowned, looking around at the soldiers, as if threatening punishment. Junker Mironov bent down with each pass of the cannonball. Rostov, standing on the left flank on his leg-touched but visible Grachik, had the happy look of a student summoned before a large audience for an exam in which he was confident that he would excel. He looked clearly and brightly at everyone, as if asking them to pay attention to how calmly he stood under the cannonballs. But in his face, too, the same feature of something new and stern, against his will, appeared near his mouth.
-Who is bowing there? Yunkeg "Mig"ons! Hexog, look at me! - Denisov shouted, unable to stand still and spinning on his horse in front of the squadron.
The snub-nosed and black-haired face of Vaska Denisov and his entire small, beaten figure with his sinewy (with short fingers covered with hair) hand, in which he held the hilt of a drawn saber, was exactly the same as always, especially in the evening, after drinking two bottles. He was only more red than usual and, raising his shaggy head up, like birds when they drink, mercilessly pressing spurs into the sides of the good Bedouin with his small feet, he, as if falling backwards, galloped to the other flank of the squadron and shouted in a hoarse voice to be examined pistols. He drove up to Kirsten. The headquarters captain, on a wide and sedate mare, rode at a pace towards Denisov. The staff captain, with his long mustache, was serious, as always, only his eyes sparkled more than usual.
- What? - he told Denisov, - it won’t come to a fight. You'll see, we'll go back.
“Who knows what they’re doing,” Denisov grumbled. “Ah! G” skeleton! - he shouted to the cadet, noticing his cheerful face. - Well, I waited.
And he smiled approvingly, apparently rejoicing at the cadet.
Rostov felt completely happy. At this time the chief appeared on the bridge. Denisov galloped towards him.

How did the concept of "masochism" arise? November 1st, 2014

This is how the story began:

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch(Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch)born on January 27, 1836 in Lemberg (then name of Lvov) in the family of the chief of police of the Kingdom of Galicia and Volodymyria, Leopold Sacher. His father's ancestors were Spaniards who settled in Prague in the 16th century and Bohemian Germans.

His mother, Charlotte, was the daughter of professor and then rector of Lviv University Franz von Masoch. Some researchers talk about her Ruthenian (Ukrainian) origin.

Leopold, the eldest son in the family, was born in the 9th year of his parents’ marriage and at first was so frail that there was almost no hope for his recovery. His health began to improve after he was sent to be raised by a Ukrainian peasant woman in the town of Vinniki near Lviv. With her milk, he also absorbed the love for the land of his birth, which did not leave him until the end of his life. Subsequently, already as a writer, Sacher-Masoch wove much of what he heard from the lips of the nurse into the fabric of his German-language short stories.

When Leopold was 12 years old, the family moved to Prague, where the boy learned German, in which he later wrote his works.

Sacher-Masoch was a successful pupil and student. At the universities of Prague and Graz, where he moved in 1854, Leopold studied law, mathematics and history, and at the age of 19 he became a doctor of law. Having become a private assistant professor at the University of Graz, in 1858 he anonymously published the novel “One Galician Story. The year is 1846″. Since that time, Sacher-Masoch created a book every year, or even more, experimenting with a wide variety of literary genres. He wrote historical research(for example, “The Rebellion in Ghent during the reign of Charles V”), plays, feuilletons, literary criticism. He was the founder and editor of several magazines, which, however, were not published for long.

As they say literary encyclopedias Germany and Austria, in 1860 Leopold von Sacher-Masoch was invited to lecture on history at Lviv University. There is no clear opinion whether he accepted this invitation, among scientific workers no, but this possibility is indicated by the impressions from Galicia in his work of an adult man, and not a boy.

For some time, Sacher-Masoch combined an academic career with literary creativity, because literary and publishing activities did not bring him sufficient profit. But after the success among readers of the novel “Don Juan from Kolomyia” (1872), written in French and published in one of the Parisian magazines, he decided to devote himself entirely to literature.

At this time, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch married his ardent admirer Aurora Von Rümslin. Arrogant, selfish, greedy for money, clothes and visits to high society, Aurora also began to write, taking the pseudonym “Wanda von Dunaeva” (the name of the heroine of “Venus in Fur”). Subsequently, they signed together under the low-grade short stories under the name Sacher-Masoch (without indicating the name). The exorbitant demands of his wife led the writer to poverty and forced him to take up regular earnings. He sank to the level of pornography and began to write unpretentious short stories, dressing his heroines in colorful Hutsul katsabaykas and scarves and flavoring the story with whips and kanchuks, for which he received the description “the father of one perversion.” Having brought Leopold von Sacher-Masoch to such a state, Aurora left him (she later wrote the popular memoir “The Tale of My Life”). And the writer himself married his children’s governess, who was 20 years younger than him and with whom he, however, did not experience happiness either.

In 1881, Sacher-Masoch settled in Leipzig and spent the rest of his life in Germany.

The work of Sacher-Masoch belongs to an era when, against the background of the flourishing of industry, the splendor of life of the new bourgeoisie and the decline of the countryside, the intelligentsia lived in a world where the idealization of rural life was combined with materialistic and epicurean tendencies, and sensuality and love became the center and goal of human life. The experiences of Sacher-Masoch's personal life, who received pathological sexual pleasure from submission to physical and emotional violence from women, are reflected in his works. The novels “The Divorced Woman” (1870) and “Venus in Furs” (1870) are almost autobiographical in nature (The Divorced Woman was based on what Anna von Kottwitz experienced and suffered during the novel, and the writer was inspired by the intrigue for “Venus in Furs” from Fanny von Pistor).

The theme of a despotic woman’s abuse of a weak man also constantly appears in the historical works of Sacher-Masoch and over time becomes so expressive that in 1886 the Viennese psychologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing calls sexual pathology, which is characterized by receiving pleasure from pain and submission, masochism. You may have heard this under the term "dominance" or simply domina

The works of Sacher-Masoch were translated into many European languages ​​and published in mass editions. It was especially popular in France. His work was highly appreciated by Emile Zola, Gustav Flaubert, Alphonse Daudet, Alexandre Dumas the father and Alexandre Dumas the son. In 1886, Sacher-Masoch received the Order of the Legion of Honor from the hands of French President.

Sacher-Masoch spent the last years of his life in the German village of Lindheim in Hesse, where he died on March 9, 1895. The extraordinary nature of his fate did not end there either - as they say, the urn with his ashes was destroyed by a fire in 1929.

Monument to Sacher-Masoch in Lviv on Serbskaya Street in front of the entrance to the Masoch Cafe. Sculptor Vladimir Tsisaryk.

Interesting Facts:

In his autobiography, Sacher-Masoch repeatedly refers to himself as “Ukrainian by mother.” However serious research did not confirm this fact. The parents of his mother, Caroline Masoch, moved to Galicia as adults. Professor of Medicine at the University of Lemberg Franz Masoch was born on the eastern outskirts of the Habsburg Empire (in one of the towns in Romania), his grandmother came from Germanized Czechs.

In April 2008, the Sacher-Masoch cafe was opened in Lviv. The interior of the cafe is hung with masochistic objects - whips, chains, handcuffs. A monument to Sacher-Masoch was also unveiled - a human-sized statue, 1.7 m high. A magnifying glass is mounted on the chest of the monument, through which interchangeable erotic pictures can be seen.

• The Velvet Underground wrote the song "Venus in Furs" based on the novel Venus in Furs.


• The group “Picnic” has a song “Herr Sacher Mozokh” (album “Obscurantism and Jazz”, author of music and lyrics - Edmund Shklyarsky).


• In the city of Lvov, Ukraine, there is a cafe, dedicated to creativity Zahera.

Bibliography

1858 - One Galician story. Year 1846
1867 —

Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch (German: Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch). Born on January 27, 1836 in Lemberg (now Lvov) - died on March 9, 1895 in Frankfurt am Main. Austrian writer.

In 1886, psychiatrist and neurologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing introduced a new concept in psychiatry and sexopathology associated with the writer’s work - masochism.

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch was born on January 27, 1836 in Lemberg (then name of Lvov) in the Roman Catholic family of the chief of police of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, Leopold von Sacher. His father's ancestors were Spaniards who settled in Prague in the 16th century and Bohemian Germans.

His mother, Charlotte (Charlotte von Masoch), was the daughter of professor and then rector of Lviv University Franz von Masoch.

On the site of the house where I was born future writer, now stands the famous Grand Hotel in Lviv.

Leopold, the eldest son in the family, was born in the ninth year of his parents’ marriage and at first was so frail that there was almost no hope for his recovery. His health began to improve after he was given to be raised by a Ukrainian peasant woman in the town of Vinniki, near Lvov. With her milk, he also absorbed the love for the land of his birth, which did not leave him until the end of his life. Subsequently, already being a writer, Sacher-Masoch wove much of what he heard from the lips of the nurse into the fabric of his German-language short stories.

When Leopold was 12 years old, the family moved to Prague, where the boy learned German, in which he later wrote his works.

IN parental home Leopold was brought up in an atmosphere of educational liberalism, characteristic of the reign of Franz Joseph. Already in childhood, inclinations began to appear in him, which later made him famous. Sacher-Masoch was attracted to situations of cruelty; he liked to look at paintings depicting executions, and his favorite reading was the lives of martyrs. An important person in his childhood was a relative from his father's side, Countess Xenobia, who was extremely beautiful and at the same time cruel woman. One day, while playing hiding place with his sisters, he hid in the countess’s bedroom and witnessed how the countess first brought her lover there, and a few minutes later her husband burst into the bedroom with two friends. The Countess beat and kicked out three uninvited guests, the lover ran away, and Leopold imprudently revealed his presence, after which the Countess beat him too. However, the boy felt an incomprehensible pleasure from her blows. The man soon returned, and Leopold, hiding behind the door, heard the blows of the whip and the groans of the count. The grievances, the whip and the furs that the countess loved to wear became constant motifs in the work of Sacher-Masoch, and from that time on he perceived women as creatures who should be loved and hated at the same time.

Sacher-Masoch was a successful pupil and student. At the universities of Prague and Graz, where he moved in 1854, Leopold studied law, mathematics and history, and at the age of 19 he became a doctor of law. He worked as a private lecturer at the University of Graz. In 1858 he anonymously published the novel “One Galician Story. The year is 1846." Since that time, Sacher-Masoch created a book every year, or even more, experimenting with a wide variety of literary genres. He wrote historical studies (for example, “The Rebellion in Ghent during the reign of Charles V”), plays, feuilletons, and literary criticism. He was the founder and editor of several magazines, which, however, were not published for long. He contributed to the Vienna monthly “International Review”.

According to the literary encyclopedias of Germany and Austria, in 1860 Leopold von Sacher-Masoch was invited to lecture on history at Lviv University. There is no clear opinion among scientists whether he accepted this invitation, but this possibility is indicated by the impressions from Galicia in his work of an adult man, and not a boy.

Specific time Sacher-Masoch combined an academic career with literary creativity, because literary and publishing activities did not bring him sufficient profit. After the success among readers of the novel “Don Juan from Kolomyia” (1872) (written in French and published in one of the Parisian magazines) he decided to devote himself entirely to literature.

At this time, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch married his ardent admirer Aurora Von Rümslin. Arrogant, selfish, greedy for money, clothes and visits to high society, Aurora also began to write, taking the pseudonym “Wanda von Dunaeva” (the name of the heroine of “Venus in Fur”). Subsequently, they signed together under the low-grade short stories with the surname Sacher-Masoch (without indicating the name). The exorbitant demands of his wife led the writer to poverty and forced him to take up regular earnings. He sank to the level of pornography and began to write unpretentious short stories, dressing his heroines in colorful Hutsul katsabaykas and scarves and flavoring the story with whips and kanchuks, for which he received the description “the father of one perversion.” Having brought Leopold von Sacher-Masoch to such a state, Aurora left him (she later wrote the popular memoir “The Tale of My Life”). The writer then married his children's governess, who was 20 years younger than him, and this marriage was also not successful.

In 1881, Sacher-Masoch settled in Leipzig and spent the rest of his life in Germany.

The work of Sacher-Masoch belongs to an era when, against the background of the flourishing of industry, the splendor of life of the new bourgeoisie and the decline of the countryside, the intelligentsia lived in a world where the idealization of rural life was combined with materialistic and epicurean tendencies, and sensuality and love became the center and goal of human life. The experiences of Sacher-Masoch’s personal life, who received pathological sexual pleasure from submission to physical and emotional violence from women, are reflected in his works. The novels “The Divorced Woman” (1870) and “Venus in Furs” (1870) are almost autobiographical in nature (the basis for “The Divorced Woman” was the experience and suffering from the affair with Anna von Kottwitz, and “Venus in Furs” inspired the writer’s intrigue with Fanny von Pistor).

The theme of a despotic woman’s abuse of a weak man also constantly appears in the historical works of Sacher-Masoch and over time becomes so expressive that in 1886 the Viennese psychologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing calls sexual pathology, which is characterized by receiving pleasure from pain and submission, masochism.

The works of Sacher-Masoch were translated into many European languages ​​and published in large editions. It was especially popular in France thanks to the translations and commentaries of Teresa Bentson. His work was highly appreciated by Emile Zola, Gustave Flaubert, Alphonse Daudet, Alexandre Dumas the father and Alexandre Dumas the son. In 1886, Sacher-Masoch received the Order of the Legion of Honor from the hands of French President.

Sacher-Masoch spent the last years of his life in the German village of Lindheim in Hesse, where he died on March 9, 1895. The extraordinary nature of his fate did not end there either - as they say, the urn with his ashes was destroyed by a fire in 1929.

« Herr Leopold von Sacher-Masoch with his honestly undertakes to be the slave of Frau Fanny von Pistor, to unconditionally fulfill all her wishes and orders for six months in a row. Frau Fanny von Pistor, for her part, has no right to seek from him anything dishonorable (depriving him of honor as a person and citizen). She must further give him 6 hours daily for his work and never look at his letters or notes. For every misdemeanor, omission or lèse-majesté of his mistress (Fanny von Pistor), she can punish her slave (Leopold von Sacher-Masoch) as she pleases. [...] Frau Pistor promises that he will wear furs as often as possible, especially when he is in a cruel mood...»

These lines are a quote from an authentic contract concluded between the writer, without whom masochism would not be called masochism, and Baroness Fanny Pistor, who became the prototype for Wanda von Dunaev, the heroine of his most famous story, “Venus in Fur.”

He was born in the city of Lemberg, which was part of Austria-Hungary, most lived his life in Prague and Leipzig and wrote in German. But since Lemberg is now called Lvov, we can consider the great deviant (be careful, now I’ll say it politically incorrectly!) almost as a compatriot. By the way, the year before last, the Masoch cafe was opened in Lviv (although, according to intelligence data, it is not popular with the local BDSM crowd), and a monument to the writer was erected in front of the entrance.

Throughout his adult life, Sacher-Masoch sought in relationships with women the emotions and sensations that the brutal countess introduced him to: humiliation, shame, submission and pain. And he got it - first with the already mentioned Baroness Pistor, and then with his wife Aurora von Rümslin, a bitchy and greedy woman, at whose insistence he, in order to earn some money (she, of course, ruined him), stooped to writing base, almost pornographic stories. Having brought the poor man to mental and professional exhaustion, this woman abandoned him. Then Sacher-Masoch married a governess, but this marriage also turned out to be unsuccessful: masochistic men are never happy.

However, in general public life the writer, in contrast to his intimate relationship, developed moderately well: he was accepted in high places literary circles, willingly published and in 1886 even awarded the French Legion of Honor. The sick, broken sexuality of Sacher-Masoch, which made his name a household name (if anyone doesn’t know, the term “masochism” was introduced by the Austrian psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing in the famous Psychopathia Sexualis, first published in the same 1886), did not turn the sufferer into an outcast.

How strange fate has decreed, right? The great predecessor of Sacher-Masoch, who introduced humanity to the other side, excuse the tautology, of sadomasochism - the Marquis de Sade - lived only a few decades earlier, but spent many years behind bars, either in prison or in a mental hospital. In general, this is not surprising: after all, de Sade was a rebel, and the public does not forgive them, unlike peaceful perverts. But - again the irony of fate! - these two people completed life path still the same - in a psychiatric hospital. Yes, Sacher-Masoch eventually went crazy.

The story of Sacher-Masoch is also surprising because masochism, named after him, is still considered by many to be a predominantly female property. Freud developed an entire theory in which he derived masochistic perversion from the castration complex, and later feminists associated masochism with social conditions education of girls and suppression female sexuality. A satisfactory theory of masochism still does not exist, but, you know, what an interesting thing: guess three times who was the first to connect the love of pain with the inequality of women? Sacher-Masoch!

“A woman, as nature created her and as a man currently raises her, is his enemy and can only be either his slave or a despot, but in no case a friend or life partner. She can be his friend only when she is completely equal to him in rights and is equal to him in education and in work” - “Venus in Furs” ends with these words.

This is what a rich contribution the cruel games of Countess Xenobia made to the history of mankind! If she had not made such an impression on the teenage Sacher-Masoch, who knows what ideas about masochism and even a little about feminism would have been like in our time? Fate is an interesting thing...