The Desire to be Free
The short relationship with Georg Ledebour was the last time Lou dated an older man. A conflict internally was beginning to appear physically for her where the instincts and her will battled in her unconscious. This was triggered by her fateful leaving of Paul Rée and his possible suicide weighing on her conscience. She felt that “Rée’s death was no accident, that he had killed himself because he could not forget her. For fourteen years he had borne his loss and now he could bear it no longer. His death filled Lou with a deep sense of remorse and she searched her heart in vain for the reasons why she had left him. Was this her curse, that she had to destroy the men who loved her? So intense was her grief that her body reacted to it by falling sick. She began to suffer from a strange heart disease resulting in fainting spells during which her pulse all but stopped. It was these spells that gave rise to the legend that Lou possessed the power of Indian fakirs, that she could make her heart stop. It was only a legend, of course, but her illness gave a physical reality to the major conflict in her life, the conflict between her impulsive heart and her imperative will. She never resolved it.”
As she continued her intellectual adventures, her acquaintances at that time were more playwrights, but one day she encountered another adventurous spirit, Frieda von Bülow, in 1892 who would move beyond an acquaintance and become her closest friend. “Frieda was manly in manner and morose in spirit. In 1887, aged thirty, she had gone to Zanzibar and Dar es Salaam on behalf of a national woman’s league to help the colonist Carl Peters organize medical assistance to natives; she returned after one month with a transient jungle disease and a lingering addiction to Peters and sadism-masochism. She lusted for erotic ‘crucifixion’—and looked to Lou, ‘majestic and holy,’ to wean her from her ‘poison,’ alias Peters.”
Lou and Frieda were complimentary in a mutually beneficial way, but as different as they were, they both commonly felt a desire to be free. “Frieda and I were different enough that we argued constantly but fruitfully, a situation I was more comfortable with than she was, since she would have liked for us to be alike in all things…But their disagreements did not diminish their friendship. They felt that they benefited from them and they frequently lived and traveled together. Lou introduced Frieda to her family in Russia and for a while Frieda became romantically attached to Lou’s brother Eugene…The better she got to know Frieda the more Lou was fascinated by the strange mixture in her friend’s character. Frieda seemed to oscillate between spurts of energy and periods of lassitude. The latter, a sign that she came from an old and weary race, can lead, Lou thought, to a longing for submission and self-surrender. Here again is the theme we have noted above: ‘the insane fascination with submission, the strongest impulse in all of us,’ as [the character] Renate confides to her friend Anneliese in Lou’s novel The House.” Frieda was romantic, but like with all adventurism, danger can build up to the point where fear overtakes romance.
Germany then was competing with other European nations with a similar colonizing spirit to appear the most civilized and the most superior. To not be politically correct, it was based on Europeans having superior technology, but dangerously not guided by superior morality. For any peoples, the advanced technology, especially in weaponry, allows for domination, and there’s a natural belief that builds that those who are dominated are inferior, even to the point of dehumanization. Underlying excuses for domination are the unconscious desires to exploit resources as well as peoples for work and sex slavery. Even when being charmed by romantic depictions of aboriginals in pulp adventure stories, living a more authentic life than Europeans, the reality betrayed that indigenous groups were also battling, exploiting, and warring tribe against tribe. Even those who say that a Judeo-Christian value system was superior, and still is, need to be reminded that many Christians behave the same way when they are tempted by power, and so moral people who controlled their appetites when exercising power back then were likely to be exceptions, not the rule.
What was more unique during this time was the large difference in weaponry as well as beliefs about heredity that existed before a 2oth century understanding of genetics. Frieda’s descriptions of the mixed race women in German colonies would put a sinful seductive spin about their attractiveness, as a “wicked tantalizer,” while at the same time white women are described as attractive in the sense of healthfulness and wholesomeness. “…Healthy Nordic blood circulated in her veins.” There’s also a competition, as can be seen even today with many people, in terms of cleanliness. Those who wash themselves, utensils, and clothing more often, are considered superior to those who lived in stained clothing for longer periods of time. Characterizations in her books included protagonists attempting phrenology to explain racial character flaws, and a lack of cooperativeness, which is understandable when there’s exploitation, was deemed to be immoral and inappropriate.
Despite what seemed to be insurmountable cultural differences, the colonizing men connected with the African women enough to couple with them, but not without the European women being jealous. When there is a cultural exchange that works there are common elements that humans from different ethnicities can agree on, and even if there are master-slave dynamics in many other areas of life, a certain amount of respect can accrue when there’s regular sex, comfort, and biological offspring to bond with. There’s also a temptation for these European men, who are for long periods of time out in a land where they can be more anonymous and rule themselves, to create polyamorous relationships where each woman is chosen for their standout attributes and when different attributes are desired, different women are chosen. A passage in one of Frieda’s books is a good example of that competition:
“Rainer asked, ‘Don’t you find her charming?’ ‘Whom, this little bashful barbarian?’ ‘Yes, I’m quite fond of her. If only she didn’t have negro blood in her veins.’ Maleen laughed. ‘Would you end up marrying her?’ He answered seriously. ‘Why, of course.’ Maleen stiffened. ‘Seriously?!’ ‘Yes. I like her tremendously. Don’t you?’ ‘That’s because you don’t get to see a European or a real German girl,’ she said, shaking her head…’She does seem very charming,’ Maleen added, ‘and is no doubt very feminine and cuddly, like a little slave; but you told me once that your wife would be a true companion for you, intellectually too. And I found that so admirable. Maria Beta would be your devoted servant and plaything. Surely nothing more.'”
At the time, bastards were considered illegitimate in terms of carrying on a dynasty and there was a narcissistic need to use a so called “pure” vehicle, a woman from the same race, and or class, for conferring a paternal lineage and passing on inheritance. In the limited science of the times, culture was confused with biology. The reality is that even in misfit marriages, it’s the software, not the hardware, that people conflict about. Cultures thrive when there’s a lot of cooperation in families and healthy forms of meritocracy and competition demonstrated in wider circles outside of the family. These are ideals that are met only occasionally, which is the endless problem of human corruption where masters like to heap on work to the slaves and put themselves in a position where they get to face less wear and tear compared to others. Masters handle the intellectual work, while their bodies stay mostly rested, while the slaves exhaust themselves in grunt work.
This unintendedly conferred skills onto these mixed cultured populations that would eventually lead to the understanding that gradually they could take on more and more roles in a colony, and then various revolutions followed to push out the arrogant, entitled, exploitative, and insulting colonizers. The challenge for revolutionaries is proving that they can maintain these inherited institutions. Criticisms from colonizers could be accurate when revolutionaries focus more on victimization, and less on skills. One person’s constructive criticism can be another person’s “unfairness” and resentment. Those who were more successful proved that values and skills were the deciding factor. On the other hand, societies that berated, taxed, and inflated against the productive people, collapsed institutions. Those places that were more based on merit became hubs of activity and attraction. The continuation of the cycle of abuse, where slaves put masters on pedestals, spread the virus of sadomasochism, and Frieda wasn’t immune to it. Whether it involves politicians and the electorate, bosses and employees, or a man and a wife, it’s easy to be unconscious and fall into its vortex.
As Frieda worked with Carl Peters to build nursing stations in Tanzania, she got to know some of his personality and his “own unusual gift of changing the will of others.” With the support of Bismarck, the power of colonization is not just in military power, but also in the ability to bring in resources, skills, physical and intellectual infrastructures to a region and make a quick contribution that creates a dependency with the local population. Being a repository of skills, colonizers can easily rule, because they are the only ones who can maintain these infrastructures. Peters himself became a nexus for power and influence in the region. “In May 1885 Peters also set up his own journal, the Kolonial-Politische Korrespondenz (KPK). By 1887 its circulation amounted to 6,000 copies and it was delivered to members of the GfdK and to all major newspapers in Germany. The KPK, being closely controlled by Peters himself, provided news about the East African venture and functioned as a mouthpiece for his nationalist agitation and colonial ideas.”
These colonial activities were also used to develop German unity at a time when the confederation was made up of a loose league of independent states. Unity may have been treated biologically, but in reality everyone was influenced by everyone, so a Germanic culture had to be based on common Germanic values which made Germans cooperate and thrive in a Darwinist struggle against the other European powers who advocated for their own values. “Peters stated: ‘The German colonial movement is the natural continuation of the German efforts for unification.’ It was natural, he continued, that the German Volk, after having established its European power position on the battlefields of Sedan and Königgrätz, felt the need to terminate its ‘miserable and almost contemptible position overseas’. It had felt the necessity to ‘participate in the material advantages which the development of mastery on a large scale has always offered.'”
Unfortunately, the nationalist sentiments were not backed up by any staples that could be economically exploited in the region, but the propaganda had the benefit of consolidating power back in Germany against criticisms. “Peters’s enthusiasm for the missions did not result from a genuine sympathy for their spiritual objectives. Unlike the rest of his family, which mainly consisted of pastors, he seemed a less than committed Christian. He spoke with some contempt about the clergy, calling Fabri a ‘goat of heaven’. Nevertheless, he was clever enough to seek their support when it served his own purposes. At least some missionaries seem to have had no objections to Peters’s colonizing agenda, particularly his ideas about the recruitment of African labour. Since the The German East Africa Company and the Berlin Mission Society were so closely intertwined in the early days, Peters’s ideas about enforced labour in the new colony cannot have been unknown to them.”
Frieda admired Peters and the other patriots that were written about in the newspaper and venerated at home. “Peters’s attitude towards Frieda von Bülow is less clear, as his correspondence gives no clue. His friend Irmer stated later that Frieda had been ‘the only woman for whom he felt real affection’ prior to his marriage to Thea Hebers. Whatever the truth behind the rumours which circulated about the pair, their tête-à-têtes in Zanzibar did not lead to a permanent relationship.”
By 1888, Frieda, as well as others, suffered from fevers and the German management board wanted her to return. “Reluctantly, of course, I abandon the work that has barely begun and do it only by ‘obeying command, not the inner drive.’ The services of our compatriots here, of whatever kind it may be, seem to me to be of great importance for the acquisition and consolidation of German influence. It is obvious that in these completely unfinished social conditions, which are the first beginnings of healthy development, the individual still has a completely different meaning than in the civilized states of Europe. That is why one would like to see only the best of the nation employed here, where every German is still perceived more or less as a representative of Germanism. I leave with the wish that my place in the interest of the further development of our cause may be filled only by a really good force. Then a blessed result can and will grow out of the weak seeds planted by my hand to the glory of the German nation. This is God’s command.”
Carl Peters would continue on to suffer scandal in Africa despite the fact that many worshipped him as a hero. Regardless, those who didn’t like him described him as a “criminal psychopath” or a “psychopath with sadistic inclinations.” In Kilimanjaro, Peters was accused of building concubine relationships among the locals. These were not described as happy relationships to say the least. There were accusations of hangings out of infidelity, jealousy, and theft. Peters defended himself that it was about projecting strength to ward off attacks. Regardless of what was true or not, the Potsdam Disciplinary Chamber found Peters guilty of many of these charges. Politically he was destroyed in the eyes of the government. “The conservative leader Baron Otto von Manteuffel denounced Peters: ‘Dr. Peters was sent there in order to colonize, in order to civilize, in order to allow for the introduction of Christianity, and what was to be expected under all circumstances was that he would lead in every way an irreproachable life. Therefore Dr. Peters must be most decidedly censured and reproved.”
Peters was eventually removed from government and his pension denied, but he had some supporters who felt he was done wrong. “From 1897 to the end of his life Peters spent much of his time justifying his actions on Kilimanjaro. Most of this time he spent in Britain, although he did travel to Africa in search of King Solomon’s mines, and he returned on a lecture tour to Germany in 1906. He was aided in his attempt to restore his reputation by a group of conservatives who remained loyal to him. These men successfully persuaded the Kaiser in 1905 to restore the title of Imperial Commissioner to Peters. On Peters’s behalf, they also initiated a series of successful libel suits against the press from 1907 to 1909. In March 1914 Wilhelm II returned Peters’s pension to him. When World War I began, Peters returned home and offered his services to the government, but his political usefulness had long since been exhausted. Instead, Peters spent the war years working on his memoirs. After a short illness, he died on September 10, 1918. In September 1937 Adolf Hitler granted him a full pardon.”
Das Haus
When Frieda returned to Europe, she was slowly awakening to both the pleasures of passion and their consequent dangers. Lou “interpreted Bülow’s behavior as a form of masochism. In her 1921 novel The House, [she] created portraits of Bülow and herself in the characters Renate and Anneliese. In one scene Renate tells Anneliese that she, Renate, has seen ‘him’ again. Anneliese regrets the renewal of Renate’s affair, thinking to herself that the object of Renate’s obsession is ‘in his soul a sort of racehorse–stable boy, familiar only with the whip.’ But Renate speaks exclusively of ‘this delirious appeal of subordination!’ When Anneliese expresses sympathy over how he has made Renate suffer, Renate responds: ‘You just said I’ve suffered. No, Liese, I’ve enjoyed—that’s much closer to the truth. Even being walked on: when we love the man who does it, that’s what we wish he’d do. He only appears to be the enslaving master, but in truth he’s our tool—the tool of a most hidden desire—the servant of a desire—for all I know!’ Andreas-Salomé was in all likelihood drawing on one of their many exchanges about Bülow’s relationship to Peters and the nature of erotic obsession. Her vignette suggests Bülow’s emotional masochism in the years after the affair, and also her fantasy of some kind of control over her tormentor and lover.”
Presaging Freud’s views of masculinity and femininity, and how there’s an underlying sadomasochistic quality, reason and passion can be at odds. “It’s always as if I were the only one—and yet it’s in all of us—the strongest thing in all of us: this insane attraction to subordination!” The reality is that there’s a trade between partners in more healthy forms of sadomasochism. It can seesaw between abuse and inspiration. There can be “me” goals and “we” goals that have a certain charge and intensity to them. “Me” goals may also conjure up a feeling of shame for selfishness, and selfless contributions that are appreciated can be a blameless feeling of reward and attention. There’s also a pressure of responsibility for masculine executive decision-making, whereas passive support doesn’t risk any blame, other than neglect. “‘When I think back, yes, there were such moments: when something was very difficult for me but I felt I should do it and had to do it, it was helpful when a will came from him, compelling, inspiring! Yes, compelling, but at the same time encouraging me. It never would have been possible, if it were not for my—no, our—benefit—because for mine alone— —'”
The tradeoff comes when selfless contributions are taken for granted, which is common when actions repeat and become predictable. If the compelling and mandating aspect is emphasized with entitlement and disregard, the sense of selfishness turns into healthy self-preservation, and here we have the beginning of boundaries. “I’m closing my ears, Reni! Never, ever can we love like that—with such crucified human pride! To love, you must have full command of yourself—with every fiber of your being—in order to love another, to understand him, often better than he understands himself. Perhaps in the past there were women who endured such men—confusing man with God—”
God here provides a purpose, because God is the ultimate authority that gives meaning and purpose to commands. When a husband is benevolent with his advice, especially when it’s predictive, correct, and wise, feminine energy can relax and trust that authority. “I want to tell you something: it might indeed be pride that finds pleasure in being crucified, that sees such treatment as something it alone would find exceptional, never before experienced. What did you say about poor little women, past and present? Of course, they would nurture the opposite dream—the dream of breaking their chains—having a bit of dominance of their own, at least while a man was in love with them. That’s all quite logical. But, believe me, the intoxication of happiness begins only with fanatical irrationality—and I believe that to look for heaven with any success, you must search in hell.”
Hell in this instance, could be the pain of feminine irrationality giving in to masculine rationality that leads to positive results. It could also be the yo-yo of emotions that lead to tension in conflict and the pleasurable relief in acquiescence. There’s also the comfort of not having to make executive decisions, with the risk that the wife is not developing herself, which may have more potential than the husband’s in many cases. The need to please a husband for social rewards involves the risk of being a slave to unfairness if he is abusive or stupid. Masochists also take on hellish challenges, even with distorted ideas about purpose and meaning, and enjoy the tension and release from the completion of each arduous project. Examples of this are people who gladly work themselves to exhaustion as a form of work ethic and pride. This can be an entryway towards cultish behavior, but human survival probably required a certain amount of heroic selflessness for a social group. The danger of course would be exploitation by a sadistic authority who uses the slave’s energy and discards them after their usefulness has ended. The feminine way to control would be to be the guardian of sexual rewards and to exploit the man as a provider like a working mule. He also defends the home from invasion and dies in war. These are extremes of course, but when the relationship is more equitable and thoughtful, “the perfect marriage, the book says explicitly, has this brother-and-sister quality and, it implies, consists of a strong, thinking male and devoted, emotional female.” The man provides rationality and purpose. The woman provides empathy and staunch support.
What is also found in Lou’s book are the limits of financial freedom. Much of what any man or woman wants in terms of freedom from capricious and exploitative authority is in fact financial freedom. Some roam the earth looking for adventure, but miss having a place to call home, and others nestled in a home for years, yearn for adventure. Many of the couples, and also people who decide to remain single in Lou’s works, have to accept that economics may limit how far dreams of emancipation can go. Jobs that pay the bills may not be passion projects. Regardless of who does the chores, those who are available, and especially those who are the most skilled, are the ones to perform them and most will find vocations that fit despite their ideals. Someone has to do them, unless one is wealthy and can hire servants.
Anneliese felt for her servants, who like her, lost children. In the case of one servant it was because she was so productive, she barely could feed her 10 children with Anneliese’s help, and when some of the children died, it was a relief that was too shameful to admit in that the food bill was already too much to handle. “She imagined, in her mind’s eye, a few of the next youngest ones, with their ashen little faces looking feeble and resigned far beyond their tender years…Born into poverty, then had to return alone, before their time, into the vast darkness.” Yet love can still honor the dead in memory. Both Anneliese and other townsfolk all have narcissistic dreams of their potentials crashing with reality. Even in those times, the little advertising they were exposed to provided new ideals to aim for. If children were disappointing in one fashion or another, children from other families, students, and understudies could become surrogate sons and daughters. The pain of early childhood death was met with purposeful action with the people that were still alive and kicking. Those who couldn’t conceive had to develop gratitude for the lives they could still carve out for themselves. Being childless, or even just in a situation of where children have grown up, economically provides freedom to explore and to develop oneself further.
The competing impulses for both Lou and Frieda related to the strength they held on the mind and body and how they motivated action. Youth forces each person in linear time to take their sexual desires seriously, but as sexuality wanes in interest with age, the desire for freedom and self-development intensifies. Sexual stances and pantomimes can burrow a groove in the mind with repetition like a broken record. When sexual obsession mellows out, a form of peace becomes desirable because of it’s refreshing quality. “In practice, Bülow was not masochistic enough to subordinate herself to anyone for long, even Peters. And once she had decided that Peters was not worthy of being her master, then no man was. She preferred to ponder German men’s violence and German women’s subordination in retrospect, from a position of independence and peace. As she wrote to her friend, the writer Toni Schwabe: ‘To overcome passion appears to me more beautiful than the passion itself—which, however, if one is to be able to speak of overcoming, must be as strong as possible in the first place…In place of desire there comes to be understanding…This is the most profound experience of my life and underlies in one way or the other each of my books.’ The predicament of a strong-willed woman could be resolved only in solitude, after great suffering…She declared herself glad, and not in the least regretful, about growing middle-aged. In 1903 she wrote down her thoughts about the second renewal of life which takes place when erotic feeling recedes. Not only was this new phase valuable in itself, it was also a resumption of the aspirations of childhood which had to be postponed when the erotic had made its appearance. Lou was often to write in this spirit, and she had written to Frieda that being a woman, and accepting the predominantly erotic fate of woman, meant not being all the other things one was able to be as a human being. So the middle years of life brought liberation, not loss. Indeed, she had come to see youth altogether as terribly limited by its preoccupation with sex, and the disappearance of this as the start of a bigger life.”
Frau Lou: Nietzsche’s Wayward Disciple – Rudolph Binion: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780691618609/
My Sister, My Spouse – H.F. Peters: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780393007480/
Looking Back – Lou Andreas-Salomé: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781569248485/
Salomé, her life and work – Livingstone, Angela: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780918825049/
Lou von Salomé – Julia Vickers: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780786436064/
Memories from German East Africa – Frieda von Bülow: https://www.amazon.com/MEMORIES-GERMAN-AFRICA-Frieda-Freiin/dp/B0C2RPBJ62/
Carl Peters and German Imperialism 1856-1918: A Political Biography: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780199265107/
Anneliese’s House – Lou Andreas-Salomé: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781640141599/
Warmbold, J. (1992). If Only She Didn’t Have Negro Blood in Her Veins: The Concept of Métissage in German Colonial Literature. Journal of Black Studies, 23(2), 200–209.
Martin Reuss, “The Disgrace and Fall of Carl Peters: Morality, Politics, and Staatsräson in the Time of Wilhelm II,” Central European History, vol.14, no.2 (1981), p.110-141
Psychology: https://psychreviews.org/category/psychology01/