Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven
Encyclopedia
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
-born avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
, Dada
Dada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
ist artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
and poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
who worked for several years in Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...
, New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, United States.
Early life
Freytag-Loringhoven was born Elsa Hildegard Plötz in Swinemünde (Świnoujście)Swinoujscie
Świnoujście is a city and seaport on the Baltic Sea and Szczecin Lagoon, located in the extreme north-west of Poland. It is situated mainly on the islands of Uznam and Wolin, but also occupies smaller islands, of which the largest is Karsibór island, once part of Usedom, now separated by a Piast...
, German Empire
German Empire
The German Empire refers to Germany during the "Second Reich" period from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871, to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of the Emperor, Wilhelm II.The German...
, to Adolf Plötz and Ida Kleist. Her father, a mason
Masonry
Masonry is the building of structures from individual units laid in and bound together by mortar; the term masonry can also refer to the units themselves. The common materials of masonry construction are brick, stone, marble, granite, travertine, limestone; concrete block, glass block, stucco, and...
, sexually
Sexual abuse
Sexual abuse, also referred to as molestation, is the forcing of undesired sexual behavior by one person upon another. When that force is immediate, of short duration, or infrequent, it is called sexual assault. The offender is referred to as a sexual abuser or molester...
and physically
Physical abuse
Physical abuse is abuse involving contact intended to cause feelings of intimidation, injury, or other physical suffering or bodily harm.-Forms of physical abuse:*Striking*Punching*Belting*Pushing, pulling*Slapping*Whipping*Striking with an object...
abused her in her childhood. She practiced prostitution
Prostitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...
, and had numerous affairs with both men and women throughout her lifetime, including the writer Djuna Barnes
Djuna Barnes
Djuna Barnes was an American writer who played an important part in the development of 20th century English language modernist writing and was one of the key figures in 1920s and '30s bohemian Paris after filling a similar role in the Greenwich Village of the teens...
.
She studied art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
in Dachau
Dachau
Dachau is a town in Upper Bavaria, in the southern part of Germany. It is a major district town—a Große Kreisstadt—of the administrative region of Upper Bavaria, about 20 km north-west of Munich. It is now a popular residential area for people working in Munich with roughly 40,000 inhabitants...
, near Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
, before marrying in 1901 a Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
-based architect, August Endell
August Endell
August Endell was a German Jugendstil architect.Endell is noted for many designs, including the Atelier Elvira in München by commission of his friend Hermann Obrist, built in 1897 and destroyed in 1944. It had an imaginative motif evocative of a breaking wave or a dragon that dominated the facade...
, at which time she became Else Endell. In 1902 she became (with her husband's knowledge) involved in an affair with a friend of Endell's, the minor poet and translator Felix Paul Greve (later the Canadian author Frederick Philip Grove
Frederick Philip Grove
Frederick Philip Grove was born Felix Paul Greve in Radomno, West Prussia, German Empire . He was best known as a prolific translator before he left Berlin for start a new life in North America in late July 1909...
), and all three went to Palermo
Palermo
Palermo is a city in Southern Italy, the capital of both the autonomous region of Sicily and the Province of Palermo. The city is noted for its history, culture, architecture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,700 years old...
in late January 1903. They then moved to various places, including Wollerau
Wollerau
Wollerau is a municipality in Höfe District in the canton of Schwyz in Switzerland.-Geography:Wollerau has an area, , of . Of this area, 56.9% is used for agricultural purposes, while 13.6% is forested...
, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
and Paris-Plage, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
. In July 1910, she followed Greve to North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
, where they operated a small farm in Sparta, Kentucky
Sparta, Kentucky
Sparta is a city in Gallatin and Owen Counties in the U.S. state of Kentucky. The population was 230 at the 2000 census.Sparta is home to Kentucky Speedway.-Geography:Sparta is located at ....
, not far from Cincinnati, Ohio
Cincinnati, Ohio
Cincinnati is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio. Cincinnati is the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located to north of the Ohio River at the Ohio-Kentucky border, near Indiana. The population within city limits is 296,943 according to the 2010 census, making it Ohio's...
. When Grove left her there a year later, he headed west to a bonanza farm
Bonanza farms
Bonanza farms were very large farms in the United States performing large-scale operations, mostly growing and harvesting wheat. Bonanza farms were made possible by a number of factors including: the efficient new farming machinery of the 1870s, the cheap abundant land available during that time...
near Fargo, North Dakota
Fargo, North Dakota
Fargo is the largest city in the U.S. state of North Dakota and the county seat of Cass County. In 2010, its population was 105,549, and it had an estimated metropolitan population of 208,777...
, and came to Manitoba
Manitoba
Manitoba is a Canadian prairie province with an area of . The province has over 110,000 lakes and has a largely continental climate because of its flat topography. Agriculture, mostly concentrated in the fertile southern and western parts of the province, is vital to the province's economy; other...
in 1912. She started posing in Cincinnati, and made her way east via West Virginia
West Virginia
West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian and Southeastern regions of the United States, bordered by Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Ohio to the northwest, Pennsylvania to the northeast and Maryland to the east...
and Philadelphia, before she married in November 1913 the German Baron Leopold von Freytag-Loringhoven in New York. There, she became known as "the dadaist Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven".
Return to the arts
In New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, Freytag-Loringhoven had very little money, and went back and forth between several jobs before becoming a model
Model (art)
Art models are models who pose for photographers, painters, sculptors, and other artists as part of their work of art. Art models who pose in the nude for life drawing are usually called life models...
for artists like Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...
. She began working in art again, creating sculptures and paintings, and making art out of other people's rubbish. It is contested that she is the artistic force behind Marcel Duchamp's famous ready made, Fountain, partly as it is more in line with Freytag-Loringhoven's scatalogical style than Duchamp's. Duchamp also mentions in a letter to his sister that a lady friend of his sent him the urinal. Rediscovered by the Whitney Museum in New York City in 1996, her Portrait of Marcel Duchamp
Portrait of Marcel Duchamp
"Portrait of Marcel Duchamp" is a 1919 work of art by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. It is an example of readymade art, a term coined by Marcel Duchamp in 1915 to describe his found art....
exemplifies her readymade pieces. She also contributed to Manhattan Dada by creating a sculpture titled God
God (sculpture)
God is a 1917 sculpture by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. It is an example of readymade art, a term coined by Marcel Duchamp in 1915 to describe his found art. God was originally attributed to a machine-painting follower of Francis Picabia named Morton Livingston Schamberg. This...
. Some of her surreal
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
poems appeared in the magazines The Little Review
The Little Review
The Little Review, an American literary magazine founded by Margaret Anderson, published literary and art work from 1914 to 1929. With the help of Jane Heap and Ezra Pound, Anderson created a magazine that featured a wide variety of transatlantic modernists and cultivated many early examples of...
and transition
Transition (literary journal)
transition was an experimental literary journal that featured surrealist, expressionist, and Dada art and artists. It was founded in 1927 by poet Eugene Jolas and his wife Maria McDonald and published in Paris...
. She and her husband became estranged during this period.
In 1923, Freytag-Loringhoven went back to Berlin, expecting better opportunities for money, but instead finding an economically devastated post-World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
Germany. Regardless of her difficulties in Weimar Germany
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
, she remained there, penniless and on the verge of insanity
Insanity
Insanity, craziness or madness is a spectrum of behaviors characterized by certain abnormal mental or behavioral patterns. Insanity may manifest as violations of societal norms, including becoming a danger to themselves and others, though not all such acts are considered insanity...
. Several friends in the artistic and writing communities, like Djuna Barnes
Djuna Barnes
Djuna Barnes was an American writer who played an important part in the development of 20th century English language modernist writing and was one of the key figures in 1920s and '30s bohemian Paris after filling a similar role in the Greenwich Village of the teens...
, Bryher
Bryher
Bryher was the pen name of the novelist, poet, memoirist, and magazine editor Annie Winifred Ellerman. She was born in September 1894 in Margate. Her father was the shipowner and financier John Ellerman, who at the time of his death in 1933, was the richest Englishman who had ever lived...
, Peggy Guggenheim
Peggy Guggenheim
Marguerite "Peggy" Guggenheim was an American art collector. Born to a wealthy New York City family, she was the daughter of Benjamin Guggenheim, who went down with the Titanic in 1912 and the niece of Solomon R. Guggenheim, who would establish the Solomon R...
and Natalie Barney, provided money to buy her a flat
Apartment
An apartment or flat is a self-contained housing unit that occupies only part of a building...
in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
.
Over the next few months Freytag-Loringhoven's mental stability steadily improved in Paris. However, she died on 14 December 1927 of gas
Natural gas
Natural gas is a naturally occurring gas mixture consisting primarily of methane, typically with 0–20% higher hydrocarbons . It is found associated with other hydrocarbon fuel, in coal beds, as methane clathrates, and is an important fuel source and a major feedstock for fertilizers.Most natural...
suffocation after the gas was left on in her flat. She may have forgotten to turn the gas off, or someone else may have turned it on; the circumstances were never clear. She is buried in Paris, France at Père Lachaise Cemetery
Père Lachaise Cemetery
Père Lachaise Cemetery is the largest cemetery in the city of Paris, France , though there are larger cemeteries in the city's suburbs.Père Lachaise is in the 20th arrondissement, and is reputed to be the world's most-visited cemetery, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors annually to the...
.
Cultural references
The biography Baroness Elsa, by Irene GammelIrene Gammel
Irene Gammel is a literary historian, biographer, and curator. She has published numerous books including Baroness Elsa, a groundbreaking cultural biography of New York Dada artist and poet Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, and more recently, Looking for Anne of Green Gables, revealing the...
, traces the life of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven by viewing her in the context of female dada and the historical battles fought by women in the early twentieth century. The biography also discloses information about the Baroness's bigamy in marrying the Baron Leopold von Freytag-Loringhoven in 1913 in Manhattan.
The novel Holy Skirts, by Rene Steinke
Rene Steinke
Rene Steinke is a novelist and a poet. She is the author of The Fires: A Novel which was inspired by her research and experience while attending Valparaiso University and most recently Holy Skirts, a novel based on the life of the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven.Holy Skirts was a finalist...
, a finalist for the 2005 National Book Award
National Book Award
The National Book Awards are a set of American literary awards. Started in 1950, the Awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the current year. In 1989 the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization which now oversees and manages the National Book...
, is based on the life of the Freytag-Loringhoven. The title Holy Skirts comes from the title of a poem by Elsa.
External links
- Christopher Lane's ill. FrL Article, including a brief biography, & some of her poems and writings
- In Transition: Selected Poems by the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven
- Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven Digital Library
- University of Maryland Freytag-Loringhoven Collection Finding-Aid, Dr. Beth Alvarez
- University of Manitoba FPG (Greve/Grove) & FrL Collections
- Freytag-Loringhoven about E. Hardt Satirical Poem
- Freytag-Loringhoven about A. Endell Satirical Poem
- "Fanny Essler's" 1904/5 Poems[pseud. for Else Endell/FrL & F.P. Greve]
- Find A Grave Memorial Find a Grave Memorial for Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven
- The Little Review Collection Finding-Aid, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
- International Dada Archive University of Iowa
- Francis Naumann Gallery, New York Freytag-Loringhoven web-page
- Exhibition Catalogue Cover, April 2002
- Dada Exhibition, April-July 2006 New York Times, 6.7.2006]
- Literatur-Haus, Berlin FrL Exhibition, 30 March to May, 2005