Louise (Lou) Andreas-Salome (02/12/1861 - 02/05/1937) - Poet, psychoanalyst, philosopher, publicist. Muse of the greatest people of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Lou Andreas-Salom rightfully belongs to the role of one of the most exceptional women in the history of Europe. You will not find such a “collection” of crazy celebrities in any other female biography: Lou was the “Great Russian Revolution” in Nietzsche’s life, she was idolized and sung by Rilke, Freud admired her, her interlocutors were Ibsen and Tolstoy, Turgenev and Wagner, with her The suicides of Viktor Tausk and Paul Re are associated with this name. “She is the embodiment of Nietzsche’s philosophy,” her contemporaries said about her, and, as many biographers claim, it was she who became the prototype of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. The famous German writer Kurt Wolf argued that “not a single woman for over the last 150 years, no one has had a stronger influence on German-speaking countries than Lou von Salome from St. Petersburg”…. Lou is a name invented by the first man who fell in love with her, the Dutch pastor Guyot, who gave lectures in St. Petersburg; it later brought her world fame. She was born in St. Petersburg in 1861. The youngest child of General Gustav von Salome, a hereditary nobleman. In 1830, Nicholas I granted her father, for military merits, in addition to the French nobility also inherited Russian nobility. In 1880, Lou, accompanied by her mother, travels to Switzerland, listens to university lectures - like many other Russian girls of that period (there was no higher education for women in the Russian Empire at that time). Due to poor health, he moved to Rome, where ends up in the salon of Malvida von Meisenbuch, a friend of Garibaldi, Wagner, Nietzsche, and teacher of Herzen’s daughter. In the salon of Malvida von Meysenbuch, Lou makes acquaintance with one of his visitors, Nietzsche's friend, the philosopher Paul Reu. Soon they begin to experience spiritual unity with each other. The girl offers Reya a project to create a kind of commune with a chaste life, which would include young people of both sexes who want to continue their education. She suggests renting a house where everyone has their own room, but everyone has a common living room. German Reyo is inspired by the idea. Soon Paul Reyo asks Lou to marry him. Salome turns him down, offering to remain friends. Nothing works with the commune. Reyo and Salome go on a long journey, visiting Paris and Berlin. In 1882 Reyo introduces Salome to his friend Friedrich Nietzsche, who is captivated by both her intelligence and beauty. A friendly “trinity” is born, engaged in intellectual conversations, writing and travel. Nietzsche also asks for Lou's hand in marriage, and is also refused. The question of the relationship between Nietzsche and Lou Andreas-Salom still remains unresolved, which has led to the formation of a large number of legends and assumptions about their life together. Around this time, 21-year-old Salome is photographed with Reu and Nietzsche, harnessed to a cart, which she pushes with a whip. Nietzsche revered Salome as the most intelligent of all the people he met, and, according to contemporaries, he used her traits in the creation of his “Zarathustra.” Nietzsche wrote the musical composition “Hymn to Life” based on Salome’s poems. Soon they they part, thanks to Friedrich's sister. Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth takes a sharply aggressive position towards the girl, a conflict arises, and Lou is left alone with Reyo. Nietzsche dies 8 years later in a psychiatric clinic, having never married in his life. In 1886, Salome met Friedrich Karl Andreas, a university teacher studying oriental languages. Friedrich Karl Andreas was 15 years older than Lu and firmly wanted to make her his wife. To show the seriousness of his intentions, he attempts suicide in front of her (stabs a knife into his chest). After much deliberation, Lou agrees to marry him, but with one condition: they will never enter into sexual relations. During the 43 years they lived together, according to biographers who carefully studied everything her diaries and personal documents, this never happened. In 1901, Paul Reyo died in the mountains, without witnesses. It remains unclear whether it was suicide or an accident. In 1892, Lou Andreas-Salom nevertheless entered into a romantic relationship with a man. This lucky man turned out to be Georg Ledebur, one of the founders of the Social Democratic Party in Germany and the Marxist newspaper Vorwarts, a future member of the Reichstag. But soon tired of scandals with both her husband (who is trying to commit suicide) and her lover, Lou leaves them both and in 1894 leaves for Paris. There, the writer Frank Wedekind becomes one of her many chosen ones. Despite numerous marriage proposals from her fans, she does not think about divorce and is always the first to leave her men. In that In 1894, her literary activity brought her fame. In 1897, 36-year-old Salome met an aspiring poet, 21-year-old Rainer Maria Rilke. She takes him with her on two trips around Russia (1899, 1900), teaches him the Russian language, and introduces him to the works of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. In between travels, Rilke, like Lou's other lovers, lives with her and Andreas in their common house. He dedicates his poems to Lou, and on her advice changes his “feminine” name - “Rene” to a tougher one - “Rainer”. Lou has a great influence on Rilke, even his handwriting changes and becomes almost indistinguishable from her writing style. Rilke, like other men who loved her, asks Lou to divorce her husband. After four years of marriage, Andreas-Salom leaves the poet. Rilke and Lou Andreas-Salome will remain friends for life. Until his death in 1926, the former lovers corresponded with each other. In 1905, Friedrich Karl Andreas's maid gives birth to his daughter. Lou leaves the illegitimate child in the house, and observes his reactions with the meticulousness of a psychoanalyst. In a few years she will adopt her. It was Marie who would remain with her at her deathbed. In 1911, Lu took part in the International Psychoanalytic Congress in Weimar, where he met Freud. They become friends for the next quarter century. Freud, with his characteristic sensitivity, does not make proprietary claims on her, which allows their relationship to exist for a long time. However, by that time she would already be 50 years old. Lou Andreas-Salome masters psychoanalysis and enters the circle of Freud's closest students. Her acclaimed book “Erotica” went through 5 reprints in Europe. In collaboration with Anna Freud, she is planning a textbook on the child’s psyche. In 1914, Andreas-Salome began working with patients, leaving fiction for the sake of science (she wrote about 139 scientific articles). Having settled with her husband in Göttingen, she opens a psychotherapeutic practice and works hard. Lou Andreas-Salome died on February 5, 1937 at her home near Göttingen. Luckily, she never got to see what time had done to her beloved teacher, Freud. In 1938, the Nazis occupied Austria, confiscating Freud's publishing house, his library, property and passport. Freud became virtually a prisoner of the ghetto. Only thanks to the ransom of 100 thousand shillings that his patient paid for him and follower Princess Marie Bonaparte, his family was able to emigrate to England. Freud had long been terminally ill with jaw cancer, and in September 1939, at his request, the attending physician gave him two injections, which ended his life. Lou Salome did not know that Freud's four sisters, whom she loved dearly, died in a German concentration camp. She also did not know that her nephews and two of her brothers ended their days in the Soviet Gulag. “...No matter how much pain and suffering life brings, we must still welcome it,” Lou Andreas-Salome wrote in her final years. - The sun and the moon, day and night, darkness and light, love and death - and man is always in between. He who fears suffering is afraid of joy.” Nietzsche was not mistaken in his Zarathustra...