Venus in Furs - Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

Venus in Furs (1869/1870)

The erotic novel that spawned the word masochism.

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In 1869 Austrian noble Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (1836-95) published “Venus im Pelz” (Venus in Furs), a semi-autobiographical work about a man who convinces a woman to make him her slave.

Pictured:  Titian painting Venus with a Mirror from which Severin gets the idea of Venus in Furs

Fanny Pistor (The inspiration for Venus in Furs) 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. The beautiful woman, the Venus in Furs of the title, becomes cruel and abusive while trying to sexually please.

Pictured: Fanny Pistor and Sacher-Masoch

The novella expressed Sacher-Masoch's fantasies and fetishes (especially for dominant women wearing fur). The Romantic era work caused an outrage in Sacher-Masoch’s home city of Lemburg and was subject to frequent bans since. He did his best to live out his fantasies with his mistresses and wives. In 1873 he married Angelika Aurora von Rümelin.

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

"...he is a remarkable example of the powerful influence exercised by the vita sexualis be it in the good or evil sense over the formation and direction of man's mind."

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)

Of all Masoch's best-known works, Venus in Furs is the most famous today.

(Fun Fact: 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.)