The History of Sex: Berlin -- 'I Sometimes Wake Up Howling' -- (Chapter IX, Part 16)

In the camps, gay men were usually forced to wear pink triangles, making them targets for their fellow prisoners, as well as the guards and SS doctors, who injected gay men with hormones to try to 'cure' homosexuality.

Pierre Seel was a gay teenager in a French border town when the Nazis overran his country.

Although his boyfriend, 'Jo,' seemed to have escaped, Seel was arrested in 1941 and tortured along with other known homosexuals.

'Outraged by our resistance, the SS began pulling out the fingernails of some prisoners. In their fury, they broke the rulers we were kneeling on and used them to rape us. Our bowels were punctured. Blood spurted everywhere. My ears still ring with the shrieks of our pain.'

Worse came in the camp.

'One day the loudspeakers ordered us to report immediately to the roll-call. Two SS men brought a young man to the center of our square. Horrified, I recognized Jo, who was only 18. I hadn't previously spotted him…'

'The loudspeakers broadcast some noisy classical music while the SS stripped him naked and shoved a tin pail over his head. Next they set their ferocious German shepherds on him: the guard dogs first bit into his groin and thighs, then devoured him right in front of us.'

'His shrieks of pain were distorted and amplified by the pail in which his head was trapped. My rigid body reeled, my eyes gaped at so much horror, tears poured down my cheeks. I fervently prayed that he would black out quickly. Since then I sometimes wake up howling in the middle of the night.'

The History of Sex: Berlin -- 'We Knew Too Much' -- (Chapter IX, Part 10)

But the sniping from his own side must have been even more hurtful.

While young foreigners like Isherwood admired Hirschfeld as a 'heroic leader of his tribe,' many of the doctor's one-time allies had begun to view him as a liability.

From the safety of his own closet, the writer Thomas Mann dismissed 'Hirschfeld and his ghastly Committee,' and the leader of Germany's largest organization for gay groups—the so-called League for Human Rights—even started quoting Nazi propaganda against him:

'It is clear that The People's Observer newspaper'—a Nazi mouthpiece—'does not aim to damn homosexuals universally, but instead by and large is striking out only at Jews (especially Magnus Hirschfeld).'

Which made it okay, then.

AND SO IT BEGINS...

However, soon after Hitler took over as Chancellor in January 1933, his 'Campaign for a Clean Reich' shuttered gay clubs and newspapers.

In May, the Nazis stormed the Institute of Sexology, carting away and torching most of its collection and ceremoniously throwing a bust of Hirschfeld onto the bonfire.

Fortunately, the institute's founder was out of the country lecturing at the time: he had the surreal experience of seeing himself burnt in effigy on a newsreel in a Paris cinema (to this day, the stock footage of the infamous Nazi book burnings is usually from the ransacking of the institute). 

Who knew?
This Nazi was probably throwing sex books on the fire

Hirschfeld died two years later in exile.

The Nazis had branded his research center 'an unparalleled breeding ground of dirt and filth.'

However, one official at the institute had a much more intriguing theory: 'We knew too much.'

As the only place for counseling about sexual disorders, the center had treated people from many walks of life, including goose-stepping Nazis.

'Not 10% of the men who, in 1933, took the fate of Germany into their hands were sexually normal,' the assistant director said.

'Many of these personages were known to us directly… and of others we saw the tragic results: a young girl whose abdomen was covered with pin scratchings through the sadism of an eminent Nuremberg Nazi; I refer also to a thirteen-year-old boy who suffered from a serious lesion of the anal muscle brought about by a senior party official and to a youth from Berlin with severe rectal gonorrhea…'

'Our knowledge of such intimate secrets regarding members of the Nazi Party and other documentary material—we possessed about 40,000 confessions and biographical letters—was the cause of the complete and utter destruction of the Institute of Sexology.'

The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- The Prophet of the Second Sexual Revolution? -- (Chapter VIII, Part 37)

In keeping with the demented sci-fi theme, the modern videos on display promoting 'orgone therapy' are cheesily reminiscent of Scientology promos, minus the celebs.

Unlike L. Ron Hubbard, though, the Austrian never lived to see the triumph of his new reich.

As an ex-Commie flogging sex boxes to American gullibles during the Red Scare of the 1950s, it was only a matter of time before Reich attracted the Feds.

In a disturbing parallel to the Nazis' book burnings, the US government ordered all his writings about 'orgone therapy' to be incinerated.

Prosecuted as a fraud and sentenced to two years in jail, Reich died in captivity in 1957, turning him into a martyr of sorts for later free spirits.

In its cover story announcing 'The Second Sexual Revolution' in 1964, Time magazine conceded reluctantly that 'Reich may have been a prophet. For now it sometimes seems that all America is one big Orgone Box.'

And since then, the West's libido has been unleashed to roam the world—and come back and pee on Freud's very own doorstep.

Just down the street from his former home in Vienna is a high-brow erotica shop with a painting of an eighteenth-century woman crouched on a bed, her naked hindquarters quivering in the air.

With a winged penis as its symbol, the store takes its name from de Sade: Die Philosophie im Boudoir. 

Though its counterpart in London boasts more relics, the Freud Museum in Vienna is obviously hallowed ground, for it's here that psychoanalysis was born—his most famous patients passed through these portals—and it's here that the prophet of a new age was persecuted by the heathens of his own land and forced to flee (Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.)

'It was one of the most privileged emigrations of the Nazi regime, because they allowed him to take everything with him,' says the museum's director, Inge Scholz-Strasser, noting that after Freud left, his home became a 'Jew-collecting apartment:' a temporary residence for poor Jews who were dispatched to concentration camps.

The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- Only With Added Nipples -- (Chapter VIII, Part 20)

'Shhhho… what are you two into?' he slobbers at Lena.

She fends him off effortlessly. 'Um, each other?'

Once all the bluehairs have gone, the backroom turns into an impromptu slideshow starring Grazy and some other regulars at the annual drag-queen extravaganzas in Graz and Vienna.

These 'Tuntenballs'—or 'fag bashes'—are the successors to the exclusive parties hosted by homosexuals in Germany and Austria back in Krafft-Ebing's day.

The official photos feature gorgeous costumes and outrageous peacockery.

Unfortunately, the pics in this slideshow are more like vacation snaps, with dodgy drag queens surrounded by hot girls trying to outglam them by flaunting the only physical advantages they have: some are actually naked.

A more typical sequence, though, shows a woman and a tranny groping a topless woman's boobs, then the topless gal groping the woman back, and finally the topless woman cupping the drag queen's falsies.

It's like having to sit through your parents' holiday slideshow, only with added nipples.

Note to self: when your sex life is the most interesting thing about you, it's time to get a life. 

Just as my eyelids are crusting shut, Grazy's girlfriend shouts at him and storms out, leaving him to totter after her and providing me with the break I need.

Outside, Grazy tells Lena and me they're headed to a joint called No Limits.

But I've already reached mine, and Lena's been gagging to go ever since she got here.

'God, that was dull!' she groans as we walk away. 'I've had more fun at lunch with a nun—at least she was laughing and telling dirty jokes!'

* * *

The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- 'Is It Him?' -- (Chapter VIII, Part 19)

Upon hearing this, our SM Youth delegate recoils. 'I could never do that,' Angelika says. 'Just go with a stranger? I'm too shy.'

For Judith, though, it's the spice of life. 'If we set a date, say, in five days' time, I'll spend those five days walking past people on the street and thinking, Is it him—or him? And I find this very exciting.'

On the contrary, Judith says she and Axel come here only once or twice a year.

'I would like to talk about SM, but most people at the Stammtisch just talk about their houses and cars,' she sighs. 'I find it boring.'

So dull, in fact, she announces that they have to go. She's left her children—ages eight and ten—home alone in the hope of swapping S&M tips with other adults.

'My wife's a little nervous about them being alone,' Axel apologizes. 'You never know what they'll do on the computer.'

At this point, if I had any sense, I'd follow their lead.

But I stick it out, mainly because Lena's coming here. And the arrival of the Latin South African is like the miraculous apparition of a model on the Isle of Man: the locals can't help but crave her Genes! Fresh geeeeenes!

Greedy and goggle-eyed, the assembled men (and women) look like they'd like to make goulash of her, or at least have her schnitzel their wieners.

One guy in particular is practically drooling.

'He is the bondage scene in Graz,' Grazy informs me.

Balding of head and bulging of eye, his teeth are too big for his mouth. I reckon he has saliva issues at the best of times.

As for his partner, well, if he tied her up and stuck an apple in her, he'd have the makings of an S&M luau.

The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- Raggedy Ann in Chains -- (Chapter VIII, Part 18)

'There's even an SM Style now,' she continues, citing the pop star Rihanna (SM boyfriend optional).

Our tablemates are a tousle-haired artist and his wife, whose orange pageboy, bright lipstick and striped tights remind me of a Raggedy Ann doll.

Sure enough,
if you Google 'bondage Raggedy Ann,'
this is what you get

Very much to the contrary, she's the model for Axel's new series on Sex and Aggression, which makes me even more appreciative of Max's paintings in the S&M B&B in Venice.

Like most modern artists, Axel can't resist the post-Freudian urge to tell you what his images are trying to say—when of course the truth is, if he could actually paint, the work would speak for itself.

His canvases feature snatches of Krafft-Ebing and Sacher-Masoch plastered above paintings of his wife, who's naked except for bondage straps and pictured in various degrading poses: bending over naked, eating out of a dog bowl and so on.

As in life, her wide eyes are startlingly blank, though in art, she also has a corresponding lack of genitalia: the belt crisscrossing her groin forms a kind of labia.

Flipping through the samples, and sitting next to his apparently mingeless muse, I'm finding it surprisingly hard to make conversation.

WANNA RIDE?

The question I really want to ask—is that really what your bits look like?—probably isn't socially acceptable, even in this crowd.

So I opt for the boringly conventional: 'Sooooooo… how did you two meet?'

Judith tells me a tale reminiscent of Schnitzler's Dream Story, the Viennese source of the film, Eyes Wide Shut.

At twenty-five, Judith found herself married with two children when she realized that—Grosser Gott!—she'd never had an orgasm.

So she took up with Axel, who constructs real-life fantasies for her involving his acquaintances.

'Axel might arrange for me to go to a restaurant, and I'll say, "Is there a taxi driver here?" And a stranger will stand up, and I then go with him.'

Presumably they avoid cabbie hangouts.

The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- The S&M Youth -- (Chapter VIII, Part 17)

For the record, Grazy says he mainly likes girls, but he's also been with men, and he doesn't always camp it up, especially not as his day-job alter-ego: Michael the Computer Guy.

He and his girlfriend have a tempestuous romance, he says.

Apropos of which, the Sturm to his Drag interrupts us to have a smoke, and Grazy gallantly follows her outside. 'I don't like her to stand outside alone,' he says.

Though it's hard to see how his presence would help her. What's she gonna say: 'Don't bother me, or my cross-dressing boyfriend will beat you up with his handbag'?

On my right is Angelika, a university student euphemized as a BBW (Big Beautiful Woman) in online parlance.

'This is my first time here,' she says. 'I usually go to another group—the SM Youth.'

I splutter into my beer. 'The what?' 

'The SM Youth: for people aged sixteen to twenty-six.'

Ah, sweet sixteen and never been whipped. 

Well, this is awkward:
a teen fashion label has the same name

'Gosh,' I wonder. 'If you start with S&M at sixteen, where do you go from there?'

'I dunno. I guess they'll find out as they get older.'

For the most part, she tells me, the monthly SM Youth meetings deal with issues like exams… moving house… how to make a bondage chair that converts into a coffee table… and how to build a torture cage from wood to keep the cost down—y'know, questions we all grapple with at one point or another. 

Angelika's writing her thesis on intergender studies at the University of Graz, where both Sacher-Masoch and Krafft-Ebing taught.

'Did you have to read Psychopathia Sexualis for your paper?'

'No—the university didn't have it in the library. At least, I don't think they did. I think I looked it up. I can't remember. I know one thing, though: if I wrote something on SM, it would definitely get published. SM's huge now. When I was growing up, you hardly saw it. But shows like CSI, Law and Order and NCIS often have SM characters—usually the baddies—but you never saw that on Colombo.'

'Or Hawaii Five-O,' I add. 'Spank 'em, Danno!'

She smiles politely; clearly, I'm too old for the SM Youth.

The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- Austria's Awfully Boring Masochists -- (Chapter VIII, Part 16)

Prior to coming here, I struck up an email correspondence with a transvestite who used to run Graz's (now defunct) club devoted to S&M—or simply 'SM,' in German.

He/she then forwarded my email address to an online forum, and since then, I've received helpful tips about Graz's miniscule SM scene.

In fact, the aficionados have decided to hold one of their special meetings, a Stammtisch, at a local restaurant in honor of my arrival.

So it would be rude not to go, right?

Weirdly, the setting for the BDSM do is a traditional wood-beamed Austrian restaurant, the kind of place that sticks antique farm implements on the walls for decoration and makes its waitresses dress up like wenches for ambience.

The arrival of 'Grazy' and his girlfriend—both in high heels and black fetishwear—elicits a few bemused chuckles from the pensioners dining nearby, but there's no real shock or disgust.

After all, today's bluehairs are yesterday's longhairs: these sexagenarians came of age in the Sixties.

And whether they're able to accept it or not (forever young!), most of Grazy's entourage isn't much younger.

Having met the Terribly Nice Sadists of France, I feel bad being mean to Austria's Awfully Boring Masochists; then again, they probably prefer it that way.

THE USUAL SEXBAIT

The twenty or so people who show up are typical of the regulars you see on swingers' sites: mainly well-preserved women who serve as sexbait for their balding partners, plus a couple of young guys tagging along in the off-chance an orgy breaks out.

At the top of the long wooden table sits Grazy, all dolled up in a bobbed wig, a black corset and a miniskirt with matching choker and armband.

Judging from his button nose and neatly symmetrical features, he's probably as cute as a guy as he is as a girl—and boy does he know it.

His poor girlfriend, on the other hand, has a face that's curdled round her nose. She's probably a big softie deep down, but her default expression is defensive: she doesn't so much stare daggers at you as an entire fortress, complete with vats of boiling oil.

You have to feel sorry for her: it's bad enough having a better-looking partner, but having a boyfriend who's hotter than you dressed as a woman would drive any girl crazy.

The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- The Masochists' Paradox -- (Chapter VIII, Part 15)

One manifestation of this trickle-down theory of deviance is the plethora of women now willing to abuse men for money.

Whereas many of Krafft-Ebing's masochists lamented the dearth of real-life Wandas, there's now no shortage of women advertising as dominatrixes.

To my mind, it's no real mystery why a working girl would opt for this particular career path: 'You wanna pay me to humiliate you—and I don't even have to shag your sorry butt? Heck, yeah, I'll do it, suck—I mean, "slave"!'

What mystifies me is that they're able to charge anything at all; given the number of women with 'male issues,' you'd think prices for a good spanking would have hit rock bottom, so to speak.

But the reason they don't is the masochists' paradox.

Just as the supposedly 'weaker sex' often rations intercourse in vanilla couplings, in S&M 'play,' the submissives hold the whip hand.

'The masochists are the real masters because they decide what's going to happen,' Oosterhuis explained, echoing Krafft-Ebing's correspondents.

'And that's also their difficulty because they have to instruct the mistress. And as soon as she does not behave as they want her to, they are disappointed. So masochism is a frustration for these men because they cannot realize their fantasies.'

Taken to its logical extreme, this all gets very angsty, with masochists ending up like their namesake, forever searching for ever-harsher mistresses and 'stimulants.'

Personally, I've never seen the appeal of being abused by a surly woman, much less paying for the privilege; not only does it seem deeply silly, I could get abused in any bar or club for free.

And after Paris, I've seen more than my share of sadomasochism (my eyes! my eyes!).

The point of this Teutonic jaunt is to explore the cerebral aspect of sex, without getting sucked into the seedy side.

Well, not literally, anyway.

The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- Born This Way? -- (Chapter VIII, Part 14)

While casting around for info about the home of masochism, I found a reference to Graz on a whoremongers' website.

The businessman writing the review said he'd had a few hours to kill en route to Munich, so rather than read a book, go to a museum or do anything productive with his time, he decided to do something anti-reproductive: he went to a whorehouse.

Having ordered himself a Thai, he offered her €200 ($270) 'for fucking and pissing into her mouth… She reluctantly agreed for three hundred. I pissed, she even swallowed some, but was not enthusiastic.'

And rrrrrrrrriipppp!

Off went another layer of innocence from my psyche.

Of course, I knew about 'golden showers' and the like—Lena had a girlfriend aroused by the sight of defecation; she used to a sit under a glass coffee table to watch, raising an obvious question about friends and enemas.

But what kind of cretin expects a complete stranger to swallow his waste with a smile?

Ah, the innocence...

The typical reaction to this is to spout the relativist view that such vices have always existed and always will.

But Krafft-Ebing's work makes you wonder whether the percentage of kinksters has actually increased over the past century.

In other words, are there more 'perverts' now than there used to be? 

SEX AND CONSUMERISM

To try to find out, I phoned Krafft-Ebing's Dutch biographer before coming here.

'I think it has to do with opportunity,' Professor Harry Oosterhuis told me. 'I don't believe in a kind of essentialist sex drive. Sexual drive and desires are also recognized and realized because you have the opportunity and possibility of developing them. If you have no examples around you, perhaps you wouldn't get the idea.'

'What I know of a lot of people in Amsterdam is that they experiment. People start from heterosexuality to also experiment with bisexuality and homosexuality. They start to develop a fetish. They might be involved in S&M because there are S&M parties. It has to do with lifestyle, with consumerism, with people wanting to do something with their fantasies and having the opportunity because we live in quite a liberal and affluent society in which you can realize lifestyles.'

Notably, almost all of Krafft-Ebing's case histories came from the upper classes.

'You find very few laborers. And this sexual culture that was already there and was very elitist has simply been democratized after the Second World War.'

The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- It All Comes Together in the Sacher-Masoch Suite -- (Chapter VIII, Part 13)

So far, that seems premature.

Sacher-Masoch's house in Graz is now a place where people go to treat their ills; apparently, the pharmacy even has a plaque commemorating the author of Venus in Furs, but I'm too distracted by the billboard across the way advertising Der Venus Club, a girlie bar that takes its symbol from another Renaissance masterpiece—Botticelli's Birth of Venus (gold and silver plated)—and charges €75 for half an hour with a 'Top Girl' in themed rooms spanning Hollywood, Africa, Harlem… and, um, Britain. 

If only I'd known…

Instead, I've booked the 'Wanda Sacher-Masoch Suite' at a hotel in the center.

Leopold and Aurora used to dine at the Erzherzog Johann after the opera, so as part of the 2003 festival, the hotel's owners concocted a cake fit for masochists—the Sacher-Masoch Torte, natürlich (with layers of fruit and marzipan)—and dedicated a suite to the unhappy couple.

Its designer is the same Austrian woman who bullied the Pole for performance art, and the centerpiece is a large portrait of her posing as Wanda in the middle of Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum, right in front of Titian's Venus in Furs as well as his Ecce Homo/Christ Before Pilate.

Irene Andessner as Wanda

Now, this is all very exciting for me because the photo ties together Titian, his pornographer mate Aretino (as Pilate)...

...and the same saucy model from the Venus of Urbino...

...posing as Venus in Furs (aka The Woman in the Fur Coat)...

—plus an Austrian artist playing Sacher-Masoch's muse.

Irene Andessner's Wanda wears thigh-high boots, a corona and a satin-lined cloak with a massive train: the fake fur in the portrait is actually the bedspread of the four-poster in the Sacher-Masoch Suite.

Though the room's color scheme is predictable—black and white with red velvet features—it's the details that take the room gloriously over the top: the (somewhat disturbing) cameo of the artist as Wanda inside the bed's canopy—gloating over you while you sleep (or not)…

...the quote from Venus in Furs on the glass panels in the bathroom… the life-sized projection of Venus on the shower wall when the lights are dimmed… and the pièce de résistance: a Gideon's Bible next to the telephone.

The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- 'The Century of Sacher-Masoch' -- (Chapter VIII, Part 12)

You may have blinked and missed it, but Graz was Europe's Capital of Culture in 2003, the same year its most famous son did his bit for world culture in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.

Nowadays, though, Schwarzenegger is a former Governator non grata, after Graz's assembly denounced him for sending a convicted killer to his death in California.

(The city hasn't always been so conscientious, however, having produced more than its fair share of Nazis—including Arnie's own police chief father.)

The star of Kindergarten Cop promptly returned a 'ring of honor' to Graz and demanded that it remove his name from the local sports stadium.

MASOMANIA

As for its other infamous son of a local police chief, Graz has also had a tortuous relationship.

The story goes that Sacher-Masoch's widow tried to have his ashes interred in Graz, but the city fathers refused to let his cinders besmirch their soil.

In the sexed-up twenty-first century, however, the dead writer has become an underground celebrity, with at least one French philosophe bemoaning the fact that masochism 'has suffered from unfair neglect' versus sadism, and Ukrainian and Russian intellectuals bickering over which country is the true home of the perversion: Sacher-Masoch's hometown was actually the city of Lviv in Ukraine, which now boasts a Masochist Café and a life-size bronze statue of him, while some Russians argue that he got his taste for a good whipping from their native sect of khlysty, or flagellants.

According to this fascinating Russian blog post on monuments people rub and kiss, the statue "hides a few 'surprises': in chest was mounted magnifying glass through which erotic pictures can be seen, and by putting a hand into the left pocket you can touch its 'man-dignity' for good luck." 

To justify Graz's EU sop in 2003, a local art gallery hosted a full-blown Sacher-Masoch Festival, including a film festival, a conference featuring a domina friend of the Fanny I met in Paris, lectures with titles like 'The Headaches and Rewards of the Dominatrix in the Relationship with a Submissive/Masochist' and a program of 'Masomania' performances, as well as an installation piece featuring a weedy little Pole being bullied by an Austrian (alas, some things never change).

'The 20th century was the century of de Sade,' the festival declared. 'The 21st century will be the century of Sacher-Masoch.'

The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- 'To Kill What One Loves' -- (Chapter VIII, Part 11)

These farcical situations turned Sacher-Masoch's life into a tragedy.

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.

Leopold and Hulda

* * *

The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- From High Drama to Low Farce -- (Chapter VIII, Part 10)

Although the conventional view nowadays is that Krafft-Ebing ruined the writer's reputation, in truth, if anyone ruined Sacher-Masoch's career, it was the Chevalier himself.

Forever striving for high drama, his sexcapades usually collapsed into low farce.

While Wanda was still recovering from the birth of their third child, for instance, her husband excitedly showed her a personal ad from a Viennese newspaper:

'Handsome, rich, energetic young man would like to meet pretty, elegant young woman; admirer of the works of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch preferred.'

The writer himself quickly drafted a reply for his wife, enclosing a photo of Wanda.

The man returned the favor, including a picture of himself in Eastern garb.

'A Turk, Wanda!' Leopold exclaimed. 'Now at last we've got hold of someone who understands how to make love!'

Sacher-Masoch then hastily dispatched his ailing wife to a health spa to have sex with the stranger.

However, Wanda returned the very next afternoon, informing her far from gallant Chevalier that the 'Turk' was actually 'a very nice boy' from Vienna—real name: Nikolas Teitelbaum—whose mother was a friend of the family.

'We talked half the night, but nothing happened,' Wanda told him. 'I felt ill, anyhow.'

LUDWIG THE MAD

In another intrigue, a mystery correspondent tried to sound out whether The Love of Plato might reflect Sacher-Masoch's true tendencies.

Wanda quickly worked out that the fan was a man, not least because of his nom de plume: Anatol.

But Sacher-Masoch fantasized that he was a frustrated 'she-devil,' a manly woman who would beat him like an evil Queen Mother of Constantinople.

The famous author then embarked on a bizarre charade that at one point involved him sitting blindfolded alone in a hotel room at midnight (to meet a man he couldn't see) and at another him and his wife trying to arrange a ménage-a-trois, sitting in the dining room of a hotel in Graz so that Wanda could be seduced by Anatol.

When she was finally summoned upstairs, instead of the deep-voiced man Sacher-Masoch had met, she found a crippled pipsqueak with red hair.

After a tiresome cat-and-mouse game (even Sacher-Masoch got bored), the couple found out years later that they'd been outwitted by two royal friends: Holland's invalid Alexander of Orange and Bavaria's 'Mad' King Ludwig II, who wound up drowning himself and his doctor in a lake (Krafft-Ebing had warned his colleague to keep an eye on Ludwig).

Mad? Me?

The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- How Masochism Got Its Name -- (Chapter VIII, Part 9)

In reality, the end of Sacher-Masoch's affair with Fanny was far less melodramatic: 'Gregor' and his Mistress simply split up when their six-month contract expired, apparently because they got bored.

After a couple more flings—one of which produced a daughter—Sacher-Masoch returned to Graz.

Then one day a letter landed on his desk signed 'Wanda von Dunajew.'

Ever a sucker for female fans, Sacher-Masoch took the bait: not only did he sign an S&M contract with this real-life 'Wanda,' he also proposed to her.

THOROUGHLY WHIPPED

After their marriage, she confessed to him that she wasn't actually a lady at all: her real name was Aurora Rümelin, the daughter of a deadbeat train-stationmaster and a woman who ran a tobacco shop.

What's more, Aurora hadn't even written the letters she'd sent to Sacher-Masoch; they'd been penned by a Jewish friend who knew he liked fan mail.

By then, though, Sacher-Masoch was so thoroughly whipped he didn't care.

He and his wife settled down in a millhouse outside Graz, where she gave birth to a second son (the first had died shortly after birth) and he focused on writing—while demanding that 'Wanda' whip and cuckold him.

Despite these extracurricular passions, Sacher-Masoch somehow found the time to churn out more than eighty books during his career, including a novella called The Love of Plato featuring homosexuality.

His works were translated throughout Europe, and in 1883, the French celebrated his twenty-fifth anniversary as a writer by inducting him into the Legion of Honor, with salutations from Zola, Dumas, Ibsen and Hugo.

By the time Krafft-Ebing coined 'masochism,' though, Sacher-Masoch's best years were behind him.

In naming the kink after a contemporary, Krafft-Ebing argued that even straight sex involved a degree of sadomasochism, with men inflicting pain on the women they deflowered.

What seemed to be new about Sacher-Masoch and his followers was that they reversed the 'natural' sex roles.

Krafft-Ebing rejected a rival term, algolagnia—or a love of pain—because his correspondents told him they didn't necessarily want to be hurt (or have sex, for that matter); they relished the feeling of being dominated and humiliated, usually with heavy lashings of fantasy and role-playing.

Sacher-Masoch complained that the psychiatrist had tarnished his mother's good name.

However, calling the kink 'Sacherism' might have hurt Austria's already delicate imperial pride: another family called Sacher ran the landmark Hotel Sacher in Vienna, home of the famous Sacher Torte.

The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- Pleasure-Seeking Pagans -- (Chapter VIII, Part 8)

Venus in Furs is a remarkably modern tale about a Galician nobleman who falls in love with a rich, young Russian and turns her into a sadist.

Severin and Wanda von Dunajew initially bond over their belief that the Christian world is corrupt; it's more honest to live as pleasure-seeking pagans.

Unlike many modern hedonists, though, they're realistic about 'the world of the ancients:'

'Pleasure and cruelty, liberty and slavery went hand in hand. People who want to live like the gods of Olympus must of necessity have slaves whom they can toss into their fish ponds, and gladiators who do battle while they banquet, and they must not mind if by chance a bit of blood bespatters them.' 

As in his real-life fling with Fanny, Sacher-Masoch's alter ego in Venus in Furs adopts the common servant's name of Gregor and follows his Mistress to Italy, where she seduces a Greek.

Besides their contract, Wanda goes the extra mile by having Severin write a suicide note in case she opts to kill him.

Sure enough, the crueler she treats him, the more he worships her, especially when she's wearing fur.

'Furs have a stimulating effect on all highly organized natures,' Severin explains. 'Science has recently shown a certain relationship between electricity and warmth… This is why cats exercise such a magic influence...'

'A woman wearing furs, then, is nothing else than a large cat, an augmented electric battery?' 

'Certainly.'

You'll have guessed that the ending isn't warm and fuzzy: Severin is 'cured' by being whipped within an inch of his life; he then turns into a sadist himself.

Years later, the Galician tells a friend what he's learned: in love, a man 'has only one choice: to be the tyrant over or the slave of woman.'

The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- The Original Mistress-Slave Relationship -- (Chapter VIII, Part 7)

Being slapped around entertained him for a bit, but Sacher-Masoch eventually tired of the doctor's wife, deeming her too common to be a despotic sultana or tsarina.

So he started trying to offload her onto some other sod, thinking the jealousy might spice up their adultery.

Sacher-Masoch had shown Anna a draft of what would be his most famous work—Venus in Furs—but she never really got what he wanted.

What she did get, though, was syphilis from a 'Polish Count' who'd been encouraged by Sacher-Masoch to seduce her.

Even worse, the 'Count' turned out to be an impostor, and when Anna tearfully confessed her infidelity—and contagious disease—to Sacher-Masoch, he pretended to be offended… and neatly cut her dead in the process.

THE FANNY OF HIS DREAMS

Leopold then flirted with a manly Baroness from Munich who turned out to be a lesbian before he finally found the Fanny of his dreams.

Or, to be precise, Fanny found him.

In 1869, Sacher-Masoch received a fan letter from a would-be authoress who signed herself as 'Baroness Bogdanoff' but in reality was just plain ol' Fanny Pistor.

Nevertheless, they soon embarked on the original Mistress-Slave relationship, complete with a six-month written contract giving her the right to punish 'Gregor' at will.

In return, she promised to wear furs as often as possible: 'especially when she is in a cruel mood.'

Sacher-Masoch and Fanny: Mistress and Slave

Mistress and Slave immediately left boring old Graz to live out their fantasies in Venice, where Sacher-Masoch encouraged Fanny to have an affair with an Italian actor he insisted on calling 'the Greek' (because it sounded more exotic).

That year, the writer also published Venus in Furs, basing the title on his nickname for a painting by Titian (which is actually called Venus with a Mirror).

As with the Venus of Urbino, Sacher-Masoch's fixation features a hefty goddess in the buff, but Titian painted her dripping in jewels and fur.

The saucy detail is in the trim: her fur cloak cunningly overlays her mons veneris.

The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- The First Masochist -- (Chapter VIII, Part 6)

The 'first masochist' had come into the world around the same time that sadism made its way into the dictionaries.

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.'

The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- Pop Psychopathy -- (Chapter VIII, Part 5)

With dirt-dishing like that, 'Sexual Psychopathy' soon became a medical bestseller, despite many opinionmakers frowning on its populist appeal.

Here was a top psychiatrist and society doctor, a stout, patrician Catholic in the staid university town of Graz (aka Pension-opolis)—a devoted husband and father of three—who had made it his life's work to catalogue perversity in 'the minutest and the most nauseous detail.'

As The British Medical Journal remarked: 'Better if it had been written entirely in Latin, and thus veiled in the decent obscurity of a dead language.'

Like Aretino's Positions, The Kama Sutra, and the rediscovered erotica of Pompeii, Krafft-Ebing's work introduced more than a few readers to practices they'd never thought of before: ironically, his Psychopathia Sexualis popularized some of the 'psychopathic' behavior it sought to cure.

At the same time, though, the book provided solace to sexual outsiders.

'By publishing his patients' letters and autobiographies, Krafft-Ebing enabled voices to be heard that were usually silenced,' writes his Dutch biographer, who recently uncovered the doctor's archive in Graz.

Professor Harry Oosterhuis cites a lesbian novel from Austria in 1901, in which one of the lovers yearns to tell a couple of male scoffers that 'We also belong to these "Krafft-Ebing people"! I think that they would have fainted!'

ENTER THE MASOCHISTS

Krafft-Ebing was intrigued by one group of 'perverts' in particular: men who yearned to be whipped and humiliated by women.

Rousseau had written about the joys of a good flogging in his Confessions, and many old codgers knew the trick as a way to get blood flowing to their todgers.

But the fantasies of Krafft-Ebing's correspondents represented something different: the flip side of sadism.

A thirty-five-year-old recounted how he'd always been excited by the idea of slavery: as a teenager, he'd had erections while reading Uncle Tom's Cabin (not the effect Harriet Beecher Stowe had in mind).

A German count confessed to paying prostitutes to kick him and make him lick their feet.

And another correspondent traced the worship of imperious women back to the troubadours.

What these gluttons for punishment had in common, though, was their praise for the pervy oeuvre of a contemporary novelist who happened to live in the same Austrian city as Krafft-Ebing.

In fact, his dad was the police chief of Graz.

The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- Bona Fide Freaks -- (Chapter VIII, Part 4)

And on and on—and on—it goes, case after Germanically detailed case of characters who would make headlines today but also make you wonder whether sex as we know it (or not) has changed at all since the nineteenth century.

On the one hand, for instance, there's one of Krafft-Ebing's early patients, a twenty-year-old farmer's daughter who couldn't stop masturbating.

The doctor tried hydrotherapy and various 'methods of coercion' to cure her before realizing the real reason she could never scratch her very particular itch: she was infested with maggots.

On the other hand, many of his 'perverts' are easily recognizable as our sexual ancestors, in spirit if not in deed: there are hordes of homosexuals (including sailors cottaging in public toilets and gay-for-pay soldiers), cross-dressing men and women (such as an officer who dressed up in a pink tutu), child killers and animal abusers (including a fowl-torturer known to prostitutes as 'Mr. Chicken'), proto-pony boys, leather fetishists, assorted sadists and people who enjoyed fisting (one man fantasized about inserting his arm, 'all the way up to the shoulder blade, into a woman's vagina') and genital torture (a captain forced his lover 'to place leeches on her genitals before coitus… The woman finally became very anemic and, as a result, insane').

BUT ONLY WITH THEIR LEFT FEET

Not to mention the bona fide freaks: a merchant who masturbated 'by means of a pocket electric battery' and orgasmed by burning holes in women's clothes on the street… a man who would have a woman lie down in a ball gown and then ambush her ('he jumped on top of her and defecated on her breasts… while doing this, he ejaculated')… a misogynist who murdered an old woman and was about to flog the corpse but 'was unable to do so because of his conscience; he therefore cut off the breasts and genitalia with a knife, cooked them at home, and ate them')… a physician who'd been introduced to medicine by his family doctor, who'd also masturbated with him as a boy and shown him their sperm under the microscope ('he dilated my anus with instruments')… a civil servant attracted to women who limped but only with their left feet… and finally the case of X, a man who 'only loved men with large, bushy moustaches':

'One day he met his ideal. He invited him home, but was unspeakably disappointed when the man removed an artificial moustache. Only when the visitor returned the ornament to his upper lip did he exercise his charm over X once more and restored X to complete virility.'