Like the Marquis de Sade, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch was an aristo with theatrical tastes who became a bestselling author and wound up dying in an asylum.
As with sadism's namesake, he was probably a bit odd to begin with.
Born in 1836, he came from Austrian Galicia, a culturally rich but cruelly poor region on the frontiers of Russia and Poland.
When Leopold was barely ten, his father helped crush a master-versus-servant revolt in Galicia that featured all the usual Slavic bloodlust: massacres, rapes, lynchings and people being buried alive.
A contemporary noted that Galician women had two choices: 'Either they fully dominate the husband and make him their slave, which is their most usual behavior, or else they themselves sink to the most pitiable level of abject existence.'
As a boy, Sacher-Masoch idealized his mother as one of Raphael's Madonnas, but the woman he idolized was his father's sister.
Tall and domineering, his aunt had a comically theatrical name: the Countess Zenobia.
Sacher-Masoch would later recall impulsively kissing her foot while helping her put on her shoes.
Like a good aunt, the Countess laughed at her nephew; then, like a bad aunt, she kicked him in the face.
LET THE SLAPPING BEGIN...
Some time later, the little Chevalier was secretly playing in her bedroom—sniffing her furs, natch—when she rushed in with a lover.
While Leopold hid in the wardrobe, her husband happened to interrupt the adulterers, but instead of begging his forgiveness, the Countess leapt up and slapped the Count in the face.
After he and the lover fled the room (via different exits, naturally), the frustrated Countess discovered her nephew's hiding place and gave him a hiding.
Whereas most people might try to forget such a trauma, Sacher-Masoch spent his life trying to recreate it.
Having qualified as a doctor of law at just nineteen, he published his first book two years later as a professor at the University of Graz.
Around the same time, he met the first of his would-be dominatrixes.
Anna was the sexy wife of a doctor (with whom she also had two children), and her young admirer was attractive in a tortured artist-mad hatter kind of way, with tousled hair and intense eyes that diverted attention from his irregular features.
What's more, Sacher-Masoch had a way with words—not to mention a steady income from his family.
The pair flaunted their affair until the writer began to realize that Anna was a gold-digger.
When Leopold finally challenged her about spending his money, she slapped him.
She immediately apologized, but to her surprise, he replied, 'No, Anna. I like it—do it again.'
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