Wanda left him for another man, and his second wife, Hulda, ended up having him committed.
According to Sacher-Masoch's biography (The First Masochist by James Cleugh, recommended to me by Finn in Lacoste), one day Hulda found the writer in his study with his favorite cat dead on his lap, ranting about how he'd had an urge to kill the Angora kitten while he was stroking it:
'Ah, to kill what one loves, Hulda! What appalling rapture! It is like killing oneself! To crush, tear, suffocate and destroy another's handiwork, to set the seal of death, of annihilation where God Himself has enthroned life!'
Predictably, he then had nightmares about cats getting their own back:
'I am being eaten alive! It's the cats—they're after me!'
And during the day, he resorted to ever more extreme remedies, including whips of hooks and nails, boiling poultices, red-hot needles, razors, and plenty of salt to rub into his wounds.
Officially, the renowned writer, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, died of heart failure in 1895, aged 59.
In reality, according to his biographer, he lived for another decade in a German insane asylum—ironically, in the hometown of Krafft-Ebing, the man who ensured his name would never be forgotten.
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| Leopold and Hulda |
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