Lou Andreas-Salomé

Lou Salomé was born in St. Petersburg to Gustav Ludwig von Salomé (1807–1878), and Louise von Salomé (née Wilm) (1823–1913). Lou was their only daughter; they had five sons. Although she would later be attacked by the Nazis as a "Finnish Jew", her parents were actually of French Huguenot and Northern German descent. The youngest of six children, she grew up in a wealthy and well-cultured household, with all children learning Russian, German, and French; Salomé was allowed to attend her brothers' classes. Born into a strictly Protestant family, Salomé grew to resent the Reformed church and Hermann Dalton, the Orthodox Protestant pastor. She refused to be confirmed by Dalton, officially left the church at age 16, but remained interested in intellectual pursuits in the areas of philosophy, literature and religion. In fact, she was fascinated by the sermons of the Dutch pastor Hendrik Gillot, known in St. Petersburg as an opponent of Dalton's. Gillot, 25 years her senior, took her on as a student, engaging with her in the fields of theology, philosophy, world religions, and French and German literature. Together they studied innumerable authors, philosophers, theological and religious subjects, and all of this wide-ranging study laid the groundwork for her intellectual encounters with very well-known thinkers of her time. According to Salomé in Ruth, written after Gillot's death, he became so smitten with her that he wanted to divorce his wife and marry her. Her account is doubted by her biographer Rudolph Binion, but in any case, Salomé claims she turned him down. Following her father's death in 1879, Salomé and her mother went to Zürich so that Salomé could acquire a university education as a "guest student." In her one year at the University of Zurich—one of the few schools that accepted female students—Salomé attended lectures in philosophy (logic, history of philosophy, ancient philosophy, and psychology) and theology (dogmatics). During this time, Salomé's physical health was failing due to lung disease, causing her to cough up blood. Due to this, she was instructed to heal in warmer climates, so in February 1882, Salomé and her mother went to Rome. (1882) ==Rée and Nietzsche, and later life==

Salomé's mother took her to Rome when Salomé was 21. At a literary salon in the city, Salomé became acquainted with the author Paul Rée. Rée proposed to her, but she instead suggested that they live and study together as 'brother and sister' along with another man for company, and thereby establish an academic commune. Rée accepted the idea, and suggested that they be joined by his friend Friedrich Nietzsche. The two met Nietzsche in Rome in April 1882. Nietzsche is believed to have instantly fallen in love with Salomé, as Rée had earlier done. Nietzsche asked Rée to propose marriage to Salomé on his behalf, which she rejected, although interested in Nietzsche as a friend. Nonetheless, Nietzsche, Rée, and Salomé travelled with Salomé's mother through Italy and considered where they would set up their "Winterplan" commune. This commune was intended to be set up in an abandoned monastery. Having found no suitable location, the plan was abandoned. After arriving in Leipzig in October 1882, the three spent a number of weeks together. However, the following month Rée and Salomé parted company with Nietzsche, leaving for Stibbe without any plans to meet again. Nietzsche soon fell into a period of mental anguish, although he continued to write to Rée, asking him, "We shall see one another from time to time, won't we?" In later recriminations, Nietzsche would blame the failure in his attempts to woo Salomé both on Salomé, Rée, and on the intrigues of his sister (who had written letters to the families of Salomé and Rée to disrupt their plans for the commune). Nietzsche wrote of the affair in 1883 that he felt "genuine hatred for [his] sister." In 1884 Salomé became acquainted with Helene von Druskowitz, the second woman to receive a philosophy doctorate in Zurich. It was also rumoured that Salomé later had a romantic relationship with Sigmund Freud. ==Marriage and relationships ==

Salomé and Rée moved to Berlin and lived together until a few years before her celibate marriage to linguistics scholar Friedrich Carl Andreas. Salomé's co-habitation with Andreas caused the despairing Rée to fade from Salomé's life despite her assurances. Despite her opposition to marriage and her open relationships with other men, Salomé and Andreas remained married from 1887 until his death in 1930. Throughout her married life, von Salomé was engaged in affairs, and many in-depth correspondences. Accounts of many of her relationships are given in her volume Lebensrückblick. Her lovers and/or correspondents included the German journalist and politician Georg Ledebour; the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke, about whom she wrote an analytical memoir and the psychiatrist Sigmund Freud. Her affair with the Viennese physician Friedrich Pineles ended in an abortion and a tragic renunciation of motherhood. She was also involved with the handsome and melancholic Victor Tausk, a member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, 18 years her junior. ==Meeting Rilke ==

In May 1897, in Munich, she met Rilke, who had been introduced to her by Jacob Wassermann. She was 36 while Rilke was only 20. She had already published with some success Im Kampf um Gott ", where she exposed the problem of loss of faith (which had been her own for a long time)" several articles, and the study Jesus der Jude that Rilke had read. In 1899, with her husband Friedrich-Carl, then again in 1900, Lou travelled to Russia, the second time with Rilke, whose first name she changed from René to Rainer. She taught him Russian, to read Tolstoy (whom he would later meet) and Pushkin. She introduced him to patrons and other people in the arts, remaining Rilke's advisor, confidante, and muse throughout his adult life. ==Meeting Freud==

Von Salomé met Freud in September 1911, on the occasion of the 3rd Congress of Psychoanalysis held in Weimar. Despite gossip about their romantic involvement, her relationship with Freud was intellectual. In one letter, Freud commends Salomé's deep understanding of people so much that he believed she understood people better than they understood themselves. Von Salomé also knew Freud's daughter, Anna Freud. They met in Vienna and corresponded for years, as did Sigmund Freud and von Salomé. According to Anna Freud, von Salomé's work, Friedrich Nietzsche in seinen Werken (Friedrich Nietzsche in his works) effectively was psychoanalysis. It was the first book about the German philosopher. ==Death==

By 1930, Salomé was increasingly weak, suffered from a heart condition and diabetes, and had to be treated several times in the hospital. Her husband visited her daily during a six-week stay after a foot operation, which was arduous for the old, rather ill man, and this made them grow very close after a forty-year marriage marked by hurtful behaviour on both sides and long periods of non-communication. Freud appreciated this from afar, writing: "Only what is genuinely true proves itself so long-lasting." ("") Friedrich Carl Andreas died of cancer in 1930, and Salomé herself underwent a difficult cancer operation in 1935. At the age of 74, she ceased to work as a psychoanalyst. Salomé died of uremia in Göttingen on 5 February 1937. Her urn was laid to rest in her husband's grave in the cemetery on the Groner Landstraße in Göttingen. She is commemorated in the city by a memorial plaque outside the property where her house stood, a street named after her (Lou-Andreas-Salomé-Weg), and the name of the Lou Andreas-Salomé Institut für Psychoanalyse und Psychotherapie. A few days before her death, the Gestapo confiscated her library (according to other sources, it was an SA group who destroyed the library shortly after her death). The reasons given for this confiscation were that she had been a colleague of Sigmund Freud, had practised "a Jewish science", and owned many books by Jewish authors. ==Work==

Salomé was a prolific writer who wrote fiction, criticism and essays on religion, philosophy, sexuality and psychology. A uniform edition of her works is being published in Germany by MedienEdition Welsch. She authored a "Hymn to Life" that so deeply impressed Nietzsche that he was moved to set it to music. Salomé's literary and analytical studies became such a vogue in Göttingen, where she lived late in her life, that the Gestapo waited until shortly after her death to "clean" her library of works by Jews. She was one of the first female psychoanalysts and one of the first women to write psychoanalytically on female sexuality, before Helene Deutsch, for instance in her essay on the anal-erotic (1916), an essay admired by Freud. However, she had written about the psychology of female sexuality before she ever met Freud, in her book Die Erotik (1911). She wrote more than a dozen novels and novellas, including Im Kampf um Gott, Ruth, Rodinka, Ma, Fenitschka – eine Ausschweifung, as well as non-fiction studies such as Henrik Ibsens Frauengestalten (1892), a study of Ibsen's female characters, and a book on Nietzsche, Friedrich Nietzsche in seinen Werken (1894). The first English translation of her novel Das Haus (1921) appeared in 2021 under the title ''Anneliese's House'', in an annotated edition by Frank Beck and Raleigh Whitinger. Salomé edited a memoir about Rilke after his death in 1926. Among her works is also her Lebensrückblick, which she wrote during her last years based on memories of her life as a free woman. In her memoirs, first published in their original German in 1951, she goes into depth about her faith and her relationships. Salomé is said to have remarked in her last days, "I have really done nothing but work all my life, work ... why?" And in her last hours, as if talking to herself, she is reported to have said, "If I let my thoughts roam I find no one. The best, after all, is death." ==In fiction and film==

Fictional accounts of Salomé's relationship with Nietzsche occur in four novels: Irvin Yalom's When Nietzsche Wept, Lance Olsen's ''Nietzsche's Kisses'', Beatriz Rivas's La hora sin diosas (The time without goddesses), and William Bayer's The Luzern Photograph, in which two reenactments of the famous image of her with Nietzsche and Rée impact a murder in contemporary Oakland, California. Mexican playwright Sabina Berman includes Lou Andreas-Salomé as a character in her 2000 play Feliz nuevo siglo, Doktor Freud (Freud Skating). Salomé is also fictionalized in Angela von der Lippe's The Truth about Lou, in Brenda Webster's Vienna Triangle, in Clare Morgan's A Book for All and None, in Robert Langs' two-act play ''Freud's Bird of Prey'', and in Araceli Bruch's five-act play Re-Call (written in Catalan). In Liliana Cavani's movie ''Al di la' del bene e del male (Beyond Good and Evil'') Salome is played by Dominique Sanda. In Pinchas Perry's film version of When Nietzsche Wept, Salome is played by Katheryn Winnick. Lou Salome, an opera in two acts by Giuseppe Sinopoli with libretto from Karl Dietrich Gräwe, premiered in 1981 at the Bavarian State Opera, with August Everding as General Director, staging by Götz Friedrich and set design by Andreas Reinhardt. '''', a German-language movie directed by , was released in German cinemas on 30 June 2016. Andreas-Salome is portrayed onscreen by and as a young woman by Liv Lisa Fries. The film was released in New York City and Los Angeles in April 2018, with a wider release to follow. The Locked Body of Lou (Заклученото тело на Лу) is a postmodern novel by Macedonian author Olivera Kjorveziroska, published in 2005. The novel explores the character of Lou Andreas-Salomé from a biofictional perspective. Lou Andreas-Salome is the namesake of the indie rock band Lou Salome. ==Bibliography==