Lou Andreas-Salomé (born either Louise von Salomé or Luíza Gustavovna Salomé or Lioulia von Salomé, ; 12 February 1861 – 5 February 1937) was a Russian-born psychoanalyst and a well-traveled author, narrator, and essayist from a French Huguenot-German family. Her diverse intellectual interests led to friendships with a broad array of distinguished thinkers, including Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Paul Rée, and Rainer Maria Rilke.
Early years
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 youngest child and only daughter; they had five sons. Although she would later be attacked by the Nazis as a "Finnish Jew",Young, Julian. Friedrich Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography. Cambridge University Press (2010) p. 553. her parents were of French Huguenot and Northern German descent. 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.
She was interested in the sermons of the Dutch pastor Hendrik Gillot, who tutored her in the fields of theology, philosophy, world religions, and French and German literature.
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 Zurich 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.
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.Nietzsche: The Man and his Philosophy, by R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge University Press 1999), page 149 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. Nietzsche nonetheless was content to join Rée and Salomé touring through Switzerland and Italy together, planning their commune. On 13 May, in Lucerne, when Nietzsche was alone with Salomé, he earnestly proposed marriage to her again, and she again rejected him. He was happy to continue with the plans for an academic commune.
After discovering the situation, Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche became determined to separate him from Salomé whom she described as an "immoral woman".Nietzsche: The Man and his Philosophy, by R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge University Press 1999), page 151
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?"Nietzsche: The Man and his Philosophy, by R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge University Press 1999), page 152 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."
Salomé would later (1894) write a study, Friedrich Nietzsche in seinen Werken (Friedrich Nietzsche in his Works), of Nietzsche's personality and philosophy.Salomé, 2001
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 marriageMark M. Anderson, "The Poet and the Muse", The Nation, 3 July 2006, pp. 40–41. 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 memoirAndreas-Salomé, 2003 and the psychiatrist Sigmund Freud.
Her affair with the Viennese physician Friedrich Pineles ended in an abortion and a renunciation of motherhood.Elisabeth Roudinesco et Michel Plon, Dictionnaire de la psychanalyse, Paris, Fayard, coll. « La Pochothèque », 2011 (1re éd. 1997), 1789 p. (ISBN 978-2-253-08854-7), « Andreas-Salomé Lou, née Liola (Louise) von Salomé (1861-1937). Femme de lettres et psychanalyste allemande », p. 63-68.
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.Philippe Jaccottet, Rilke par lui-même, 1970, p. 29 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, which Rilke had read.
As Philippe Jaccottet reports, Salomé wrote in Lebensrückblick: "I was your wife for years because you were the first reality, where man and body are indistinguishable from each other, an indisputable fact of life itself. I could have said literally what you told me when you confessed your love to me: Only you are real. That is how we became husband and wife even before we became friends, not by choice, but by this unfathomable marriage [...] We were brother and sister, but as in a distant past, before the marriage between brother and sister became sacrilegious."Philippe Jaccottet, Rilke par lui-même, 1970, p.29–30
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.Gerald Stieg, 2007, p.979-980 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. The romance between the poet and Salomé lasted three years, then turned into a friendship, which would continue until Rilke's death, as evidenced by their correspondence. In 1937, Freud said of Salomé's relationship with Rilke: "She was both the muse and the attentive mother of the great poet."Roudinesco and Plon, 2011, p. 65
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.Heinz F. Peters: Lou Andreas-Salomé: Das Leben einer außergewöhnlichen Frau. Kindler, München 1964, S. 7 (Vorwort, ohne Quellenangabe).
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.Freud, Sigmund. Richards, Angela, editor. Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality and Other Works. The Penguin Freud Library, Vol. 7 Penguin. (1977) pp.295-302 However, she had written about the psychology of female sexuality before she ever met Freud, in her book Die Erotik (1911).