Masochism and Philosemitism: The Strange Case of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

Abstract

In the history of nineteenth-century sexuality, the erotic novels of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch occupy an important place as the literary source for the term 'masochism'. Writing primarily in the 1860s, 1870s and 1880s, Sacher-Masoch won a wide audience for his pornographic tales. But it is less well known today that in the same period he also wrote a long series of 'tales of the ghetto' which are distinguished by ardent philosemitism. In the following remarks, I shall investigate the congruence between eroticism and philosemitism in the writings of this peculiar Austrian author. The rapid industrialization of Central Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century brought with it the destruction of traditional village life and a corresponding nostalgia for this vanishing idyllic world. The literary genre of Dorfgeschichten, pioneered by the German-Jewish author Berthold Auerbach, was part of the attempt to recapture through fiction what modernity had destroyed. Within the category of Dorfgeschichten literary historians have identified a particular subgenre called Ghettogeschichten which sought to satisfy the thirst of the German-reading public for medieval romance with stories of the still-traditional Jewish communities of Eastern Europe.' The discovery of the 'ghetto' (a romantic misnomer from a strictly historical point of view) must be understood as a kind of literary mirror image to the rise of modern antisemitism. While nineteenthcentury antisemites since the Enlightenment saw in the Jews a backward and primitive people still mired in the Middle Ages, the authors of the Ghettogeschichten Leopold Kompert, Karl Emil