Sacher-Masoch, Leopold von
1836–1895

The name Leopold von Sacher-Masoch is irrevocably associated with a sexual need to be dominated or punished. At the time of their publication, his writings illustrated a broadly articulated nineteenth century trend in western culture's reimaging of the beautiful woman as a femme fatale who sexually victimizes the man. Yet Sacher-Masoch's popular literary realizations of a common nineteenth century model of male sexual fascination were not the direct source of his fame. Instead, his enormous influence on modern understandings of sexuality must be traced to early psychoanalytic interest in his writings as documents that were believed to be unusually transparent in revealing their author's erotic motivation. A model of a satisfied "victim" could be reconciled with established notions of femininity, but sexual submission and the enjoyment of pain by men was often regarded in twentieth-century psychiatry as being strangely at odds with the essential role played by male aggression and dominance in society.

The author Leopold von Sacher-Masoch was born in Lemberg, Galicia (now Poland), on January 27, the first of five children in a respectable bourgeois family of Slavic and Bohemian ancestry. His father, Leopold von Sacher, served as the chief of police in Lemberg. His mother, Caroline von Sacher (née Masoch), was descended from minor nobility described as Ukrainian or Polish. In 1838 the family name was changed officially to Sacher-Masoch.

In 1848 the family moved to Prague in time for Leopold to witness firsthand the Prague revolt. Revolutionary movements and the complexities of social and political life for Slavic peoples and other ethnic minorities under the control of the Austro-Hungarian Empire would become a lifelong interest for Sacher-Masoch, one that was reflected in his novels, journalistic writing, and editorship of various literary tracts as well as his promulgation of pan-Slavic ideas and active support of organizations opposed to anti-Semitism.

EDUCATION AND EARLY PUBLICATIONS

In 1852 Sacher-Masoch entered the University of Prague. Contrary to his father's hope that his oldest son would become a lawyer, Leopold began studying for a doctor of philosophy degree in history at Karl-Franzens University in the city of Graz, where his father had been transferred in 1854. Upon completion of his doctorate in 1856, Sacher-Masoch began lecturing in history at the university. His colleagues criticized his historical writing, including his 1857 book Der Aufstand in Gent unter Kaiser Carl V [The revolt in Ghent under Emperor Charles V] as being too much in the style of fiction. In 1858 Sacher-Masoch's first novel, Eine Galiziche Geschichte: 1846 [A Galician tale: 1846] was published anonymously and received critical acclaim. Sacher-Masoch reconsidered a career in law but because of his political leanings was forbidden entry into law school by the Hapsburg government in 1859, the same year he was passed over for a professorship.

THE NOVELS

With his academic career faltering, Sacher-Masoch invested even more energy in publishing the nonfiction UngarnsUntergang und Maria von Oesterreich [Hungary's downfall and Maria of Austria], which appeared in 1863, as well as fiction, including the novels Der Emissar [The emissary] in 1863 and Don Juan von Kolomea [Don Juan of Kolomea] in 1864. Again rejected for promotion to a professorship in 1865, Sacher-Masoch began devoting himself almost exclusively to writing plays, novels, and historical nonfiction. He also took up publication of a magazine, Die Gartenlaube für Oesterreich [The arbor for Austria] in 1866. In spite of his prolific literary output, he was plagued by financial insecurity, and this may explain why he did not resign from the university until 1868.

In 1869 Sacher-Masoch published a highly autobiographical novel, Die geschiedene Frau [The Divorced Woman], that was based on his love affair with a married woman, Anna Franziska von Kottowitz. The book received a mixed critical reaction, with some reviewers condemning it for immorality. In the same year Sacher-Masoch solidified his plans for a cycle of multiple novels to be called collectively Das Vermächtniss Kains [The heritage of Cain]. In the cycle he hoped to address systematically what he regarded as the important themes of humankind: love, property, the state, war, work, and death.

As part of the cycle Venus im Pelz [Venus in furs] was published in 1870. This short novel would become Sacher-Masoch's most enduring work, appearing in many different translations and editions long after his death. It also served as the basis for theatrical films in 1967, 1969, and 1994. The male narrator of the novel, Severin von Kuziemski, meets Wanda von Dunayev, a beautiful woman whom he likens to a goddess and to a statue of cold marble wrapped in furs. Because she seems to embody the ideal woman of his fantasies, he asks to worship her. Seeking a woman who will dominate him completely, he demands: "Trample on me!" (Sacher-Masoch 1991, p. 182). Severin asks this "Venus in furs" to sign a contract that will make him her slave but that has two stipulations: She may never leave him completely or turn him over for punishment to another lover. The hero willingly confers power on the female, and Wanda plays her assigned role by abusing Severin physically with a whip and other accoutrements of domination but also emotionally by taking other lovers.

As the novel progresses, Severin tries to persuade the reader through his narration of the story that he is victimized by the woman if not by circumstances. At one point, Wanda attempts to get Severin to admit that everything she has done to abuse and humiliate him has been at his behest. His reply is coy: "You take my fantasies too seriously" (Sacher-Masoch 1991, p. 167). When Wanda enlists her handsome lover, "The Greek," to help her abuse Severin, the latter finally rebels. He declares his reformation: "The moral is that woman … is man's enemy; she can be his slave or his mistress but never his companion. This she can only be when she has the same rights as he and is his equal in education and work. For the time being there is only one alternative: to be the hammer or the anvil" (Sacher-Masoch 1991, p. 288).

The veiled representation of sex and violence in Sacher-Masoch's work appears in archetypal form in Venus in Furs. Early in the novel Severin describes Wanda: "At the sight of her lying on red velvet cushions, her precious body peeping out between the folds of sable, I realized how powerfully sensuality and lust are aroused by flesh that is only partly revealed…. [S]he seemed as saintly and chaste in her unveiled beauty as the statue of the goddess …" (Sacher-Masoch 1991, p. 201).

Sacher-Masoch's rhetorical reliance on idealized eroticism rather than overt obscenity resulted in the general acceptance of his novels as literature rather than pornography in spite of their frequent inclusion of flagellation, complex sexual masquerades, and the fetishistic overvaluation of female clothing, especially furs. As Gilles Deleuze observes in his highly influential rereading of Sacher-Masoch: "Of Masoch it can be said, as it cannot be of Sade, that no one has ever been so far with so little offence to decency" (1967, p. 31).

In this regard Deleuze suggests that fantasy is at the core of Sacher-Masoch's literature. It might be assumed that like The Divorced Wife, Venus in Furs was based on Sacher-Masoch's intimate relationship with a woman, in this case Fanny Pistor. Although in 1869 Sacher-Masoch signed a "contract of submission" with her in which he agreed to submit to Pistor's every whim, there was not a one-way trajectory between real life and his novels. In her autobiography Angelika Aurora Rumelin, the first of Sacher-Masoch's two wives, hints that Venus in Furs inspired Sacher-Masoch's sexual relations with Fanny Pistor rather than the other way around. Indeed, Angelika became Sacher-Masoch's wife in 1873 only after she presented herself to him anonymously (and deceptively) as a noblewoman in furs, signed a sexual contract with him, tortured him for months, and changed her name to that of the cruel heroine of Venus in Furs.

CONTEMPORARY AND MODERN INTERPRETATIONS

Indeed, the line between Sacher-Masoch's fantasies, his twenty-five-year career of novel writing, and his private life dissolved completely in 1886 with the publication of Psychopathia Sexualis, Richard von Krafft-Ebing's authoritative compendium of case histories of perversions of the normal sexual instinct. Krafft-Ebing noted the existence of a specific mode of sexual practices in which men acted on their wish to be subjugated. He observed that those practices, including "pagism" (pretending to be a woman's servant), played a foundational role in the novels of Sacher-Masoch, and so he would call this sexual anomaly masochism. As a result, Krafft-Ebing irrevocably linked Sacher-Masoch's name to sexual pathology, and in later editions of his book he justified that decision by suggesting that the "revered author" (who by then was deceased) "himself was afflicted with this anomaly" (Krafft-Ebing 1965, pp. 132-133).

Krafft-Ebing's association of Sacher-Masoch with the sexual practices of masochism would outlive the acclaim and popularity that greeted the work of both men during their lifetimes. Long after Sacher-Masoch's novels were by and large forgotten and Krafft-Ebing's moralistic approach to sexology had been superseded by more subtle psychological theory, the commonly used term masochism and the sexual acts it was presumed to represent continued to play an important role in psychoanalytic thought and attempts to understand the development of sexuality.

Sigmund Freud addressed the issue of masochism in numerous articles, including "A Child Is Being Beaten" (1919) and "The Economic Problem in Masochism" (1924), and Theodor Reik produced an exhaustive tome on the subject, Masochism in Modern Man (1941). Although both associated masochism with a rejection of conventionally conceived norms of masculine sexuality, neither drew on Sacher-Masoch's writings for his analysis of the perplexing pain-pleasure dynamic or any other element of masochism. It was not until the publication of the philosopher Gilles Deleuze's Coldness and Cruelty in 1967 that this would be done.

Deleuze's revisionary exegesis sparked a revival of interest in the literature of Sacher-Masoch and inspired a scholarly reconsideration of the complexities of masochism, particularly in its reversal of traditional patriarchal expectations of power aligned according to gender. As a consequence, masochism has emerged as an important theme in wide-ranging cultural discourses about both historical and contemporary convergences of sexuality and violence.

see also Sade, Marquis de; Sadism.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

WORKS BY

Sacher-Masoch, Leopold von. 1864. Don Juan von Kolomea: Galizische Geschichten, ed. Michael Farin. Repr., Bonn, Germany: Bouvier, 1985.

Sacher-Masoch, Leopold von. 1892. Jüdisches Leben in Wort und Bild [Jewish lives in words and images]. Facsimile reprint. Wiesbaden, Germany: Fourier, 1986.

Sacher-Masoch, Leopold von. 1870. Venus in Furs. Repr., New York: Zone Books, 1991.

WORKS ABOUT

Deleuze, Gilles. 1967. Coldness and Cruelty. Repr., New York: Zone Books, 1991.

Freud, Sigmund. 1963. "A Child Is Being Beaten." In Sexuality and the Psychology of Love, ed. Philip Rieff. New York: Macmillan. (Orig. pub. 1919.)

Freud, Sigmund. 1963. "The Economic Problem in Masochism." In General Psychological Theory: Papers on Metapsychology, ed. Philip Rieff. New York: Macmillan/Collier. (Orig. pub. 1925.)

Krafft-Ebing, Richard von.1965. Psychopathia Sexualis, trans. F. J. Rebman. From the 12th German edition. New York: Special Books. (Orig. pub. 1886.)

Noyes. John K. 1997. The Mastery of Submission: Inventions of Masochism. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

Reik, Theodor. 1941. Masochism in Modern Man, trans. Margaret H. Beigel and Gertrud M. Kruth. New York. Farrar, Straus.

Sacher-Masoch, Wanda von. 1990. The Confessions of Wanda von Sacher-Masoch, trans. Marian Phillips; Caroline Hebert; and V. Vale. San Francisco: Re/Search Publications. (Orig. pub. 1906.)

Schlichtegroll, Carl Felix von. 2003. Sacher-Masoch. Munich: Belleville. (Orig. pub. 1901.)

Studlar, Gaylyn. 1988. In the Realm of Pleasure: Von Sternberg, Dietrich and the Masochistic Aesthetic. Champaign: University of Illinois Press.

Wiebel, Peter, ed. 2003. Phantom of Desire: Visions of Masochism. Munich, Germany: Belleville and Neue Galerie Graz am Landesmuseum Joanneum.

                                             Gaylyn Studlar