Elsa Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven (née Else Hildegard Plötz; 12 July 1874 – 14 December 1927) was a German

avant-garde In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...

visual

artist An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating the work of art. The most common usage (in both everyday speech and academic discourse) refers to a practitioner in the visual arts o ...

and

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...

, who was active in

Greenwich Village Greenwich Village, or simply the Village, is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street (Manhattan), 14th Street to the north, Broadway (Manhattan), Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the s ...

, New York, from 1913 to 1923, where her radical self-displays came to embody a living

Dada Dada () or Dadaism was an anti-establishment art movement that developed in 1915 in the context of the Great War and the earlier anti-art movement. Early centers for dadaism included Zürich and Berlin. Within a few years, the movement had s ...

. She was considered one of the most controversial and radical women artists of the era. Her provocative poetry was published posthumously in 2011 in '' Body Sweats: The Uncensored Writings of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven''. ''The New York Times'' praised the book as one of the notable art books of 2011.

Early life

Elsa Plötz was born on 12 July 1874, in Swinemünde in

Pomerania Pomerania ( ; ; ; ) is a historical region on the southern shore of the Baltic Sea in Central Europe, split between Poland and Germany. The central and eastern part belongs to the West Pomeranian Voivodeship, West Pomeranian, Pomeranian Voivod ...

, Germany, to Adolf Plötz, a mason, and Ida Marie Kleist. Her relationship with her father was temperamental—she emphasized how controlling he was in the family, as well as how cruel, yet big-hearted he was. In her art, she related the ways that political structures promote masculine authority in family settings, maintaining the state's patriarchal societal order. Her discontent with her father's masculine control may have fostered her anti-patriarchal activist approach to life. On the other hand, the relationship that she had with her mother was full of admiration—her mother's craft involving the repurposing of found objects could have spawned Freytag-Loringhoven's use of street debris and found objects in her own artworks. She worked as an actress and vaudeville performer while having numerous affairs with artists in Berlin, Munich and Italy. She studied art in

Dachau Dachau (, ; , ; ) was one of the first concentration camps built by Nazi Germany and the longest-running one, opening on 22 March 1933. The camp was initially intended to intern Hitler's political opponents, which consisted of communists, s ...

, near Munich. She married Berlin-based architect

August Endell August Endell (April 12, 1871 – April 13, 1925) was a designer, writer, teacher, and German architect. He was one of the founders of the Jugendstil movement, the German counterpart of Art Nouveau. His first marriage was with Baroness Elsa, Els ...

in a civil service on August 22, 1901, in Berlin, becoming Elsa Endell. They had an "open relationship", and in 1902 she became romantically involved with a friend of Endell, the minor poet and translator Felix Paul Greve (who later went by the name Frederick Philip Grove). After the trio travelled together to Palermo, Sicily in late January 1903, the Endells' marriage disintegrated. They divorced in 1906. Although their separation was acrimonious, she dedicated several satirical poems to Endell. In 1906, she and Greve returned to Berlin, where they were married on August 22, 1907. By 1909, Greve was in deep financial trouble. With his wife's help, he staged a suicide and departed for North America in late July 1909. In July 1910, Elsa joined him in the United States, where they operated a small farm in

Sparta Sparta was a prominent city-state in Laconia in ancient Greece. In antiquity, the city-state was known as Lacedaemon (), while the name Sparta referred to its main settlement in the Evrotas Valley, valley of Evrotas (river), Evrotas rive ...

, Kentucky, not far from Cincinnati. Greve suddenly deserted her in 1911 and went west to a bonanza farm near Fargo, North Dakota, and to Manitoba in 1912. There are no records of a divorce from Greve. Elsa started modeling for artists in Cincinnati, and made her way east via West Virginia and Philadelphia, and then she married her third husband, the German Baron Leopold von Freytag-Loringhoven (son of

Hugo von Freytag-Loringhoven Hugo Friedrich Philipp Johann Freiherr von Freytag-Loringhoven (May 20, 1855 – October 19, 1924) was a Prussian general and a writer on military matters, being awarded the Pour le Mérite in 1916 for his work as a historian. Biography H ...

), in November 1913 in New York. At that time Elsa began to make sculptures out of found and discarded objects. She later became known as "the dadaist Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven".

Work

Baroness Von Freytag - Loringhoven LCCN2014714092

In New York City, Freytag-Loringhoven supported herself by working in a cigarette factory and by posing as a model for artists such as Louis Bouché,

George Biddle George Biddle (January 24, 1885 – November 6, 1973) was an American painter, muralist and lithographer, best known for his social realism and combat art. A childhood friend of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, he played a major role in establis ...

, and

Theresa Bernstein Theresa Ferber Bernstein-Meyerowitz (March 1, 1890 – February 12, 2002) was an Americans, American artist, writer, and supercentenarian born in Kraków, in what is now Poland, and raised in Philadelphia. She received her art training in Philad ...

. She appeared in photographs by

Man Ray Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky; August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American naturalized French visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealism, Surrealist movements, ...

, George Grantham Bain and others.

Poetry

The Baroness was given a platform for her poetry in ''

The Little Review ''The Little Review'' was an American avant-garde literary magazine founded by Margaret Anderson in Chicago's historic Fine Arts Building, published literary and art work from 1914 to May 1929. With the help of Jane Heap and Ezra Pound ...

'', where, starting in 1918, her work was featured alongside chapters of

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (born James Augusta Joyce; 2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influentia ...

's ''

Ulysses Ulysses is the Latin name for Odysseus, a legendary Greek hero recognized for his intelligence and cunning. He is famous for his long, adventurous journey home to Ithaca after the Trojan War, as narrated in Homer's Odyssey. Ulysses may also refer ...

''.

Jane Heap Jane Heap (November 1, 1883 – June 18, 1964) was an American publisher and a significant figure in the development and promotion of literary modernism. Together with Margaret Anderson, her friend and business partner (who for some years was als ...

considered the Baroness "the first American dada." She was an early female pioneer of

sound poetry Sound poetry is an artistic form bridging literary and musical composition, in which the phonetic aspects of human speech are foregrounded instead of more conventional semantic and syntactic values; "verse without words". By definition, sound poe ...

, but also made creative use of the

dash The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen ...

, while many of her

portmanteau In linguistics, a blend—also known as a blend word, lexical blend, or portmanteau—is a word formed by combining the meanings, and parts of the sounds, of two or more words together.

compositions, such as "Kissambushed" and "Phalluspistol," present miniature poems. Most of her poems remained unpublished until the publications of '' Body Sweats''. Her personal papers were preserved after her death by her editor, literary agent, artistic collaborator, and lover

Djuna Barnes Djuna Barnes ( ; June 12, 1892 – June 18, 1982) was an American artist, illustrator, journalist, and writer who is perhaps best known for her novel '' Nightwood'' (1936), a cult classic of lesbian fiction and an important work of modernist lite ...

. The

University of Maryland Libraries The University of Maryland Libraries is the largest university library system in the Washington D.C.–Baltimore area. The system includes eight libraries: six are located on the University of Maryland, College Park, College Park campus, while ...

acquired a collection of her work with the papers of Barnes in 1973 and subsequently separated von Freytag-Lorninghoven's papers and treated them as an individual collection. The collection contains correspondence, visual poems, and other artistic/literary works by the artist. The University of Maryland's special collections has an extensive digital archive of her manuscripts.

Collage, assemblage and performance

In New York, the Baroness also worked on assemblage, sculptures and paintings, creating art out of the rubbish she collected from the streets. The Baroness was known to construct elaborate costumes from found objects, creating a "kind of living collage" that erased the boundaries between life and art. Scholar Eliza Jane Reilly argues that the Baroness's elaborate costumes both critiqued and challenged the bourgeoisie notions of feminine beauty and economic worth. She adorned herself with utilitarian objects like spoons, tin cans, and curtain rings, as well as street debris that she came across. The Baroness's use of her own body as a medium was deliberate, to transform herself into a specific type of spectacle—one that women who complied to the constraints of femininity of the time would be humiliated to embody. By doing so, she controlled and established agency over the visual access to her own nudity, unhinged the presentational expectations of femininity by appearing androgynous, drew upon ideas of women's selfhood and sexual politics, and provided emphasis on her anti-consumerism and anti-aestheticism outlooks. She included her body's smells, perceived imperfections, and leakages in her body art. Irene Gammel argues that the placement of her raw personal body/self in public space could be described as a type of Irrational Modernism. In a performance of these ideals sometime between 1915-1916 in

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

, von Freytag-Loringhoven took a gifted newspaper clipping of

Marcel Duchamp Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, ; ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, Futurism and conceptual art. He is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Pica ...

's ''Nude Descending a Staircase'' to rub over her own nude body while reciting a love poem as an ode to the artist of the original painting. This performance was not only a public proclamation of her romantic feelings for Duchamp at that time, but transformative due to this act turning the working artist-model into an artist in her own right. The Baroness's body art was a form of

dadaist Dada () or Dadaism was an anti-establishment art movement that developed in 1915 in the context of the Great War and the earlier anti-art movement. Early centers for dadaism included Zürich and Berlin. Within a few years, the movement had s ...

performance art and activism. Few artworks by the Baroness exist today. Several known

found object A found object (a calque from the French ''objet trouvé''), or found art, is art created from undisguised, but often modified, items or products that are not normally considered materials from which art is made, often because they already hav ...

works include ''Enduring Ornament'' (1913), ''Earring-Object'' (1917–1919), ''Cathedral'' (c. 1918) and ''Limbswish'' (c. 1920). Rediscovered by the

Whitney Museum The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a Modern art, modern and Contemporary art, contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighbor ...

in New York City in 1996, her ''

Portrait of Marcel Duchamp ''Portrait of Marcel Duchamp'' is a circa 1920–1922 work of art by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. It is an example of assemblage, made of an amalgamation of broken wine glasses, assorted feathers, tree twigs, and other unidentifiable ...

'' (1920–1922) is another example of her assemblages. There has been speculation that some artworks attributed to other artists of the period can now either be partially attributed to the Baroness, or raise the possibility that she may have created the works. One work, called ''

God In monotheistic belief systems, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. In polytheistic belief systems, a god is "a spirit or being believed to have created, or for controlling some part of the un ...

'' (1917) had for a number of years been solely attributed to the artist

Morton Livingston Schamberg Morton Livingston Schamberg (October 15, 1881 – October 13, 1918) was an American modernism, American modernist painter and photographer. He was one of the first American artists to explore the aesthetic qualities of industrial subjects.. ...

. The

Philadelphia Museum of Art The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) is an List of art museums#North America, art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at ...

, which collection includes ''God'', now credits the Baroness as a co-author of this piece. Although Amelia Jones suggested that this artwork's concept and title was created by the Baroness, it was likely constructed by both Schamberg and the Baroness. This sculpture, ''God'', involved a cast iron plumbing trap and a wooden mitre box, assembled in a phallic-like manner. Her concept behind the shape and choice of materials is indicative of her commentary on the worship and love that Americans have for plumbing that trumps all else; additionally, it is revealing of the Baroness's rejection of technology.

''Fountain'' (1917)

The sculpture ''

Fountain A fountain, from the Latin "fons" ( genitive "fontis"), meaning source or spring, is a decorative reservoir used for discharging water. It is also a structure that jets water into the air for a decorative or dramatic effect. Fountains were o ...

'' (1917), by Marcel Duchamp has been speculatively attributed to the Baroness. This has been claimed to be supported by a "great deal of circumstantial evidence." The speculation is largely based on a letter written by Marcel Duchamp to his sister Suzanne (dated April 11, 1917) where he refers to the famous ready-made: "One of my female friends under a masculine pseudonym, Richard Mutt, sent in a porcelain urinal as a sculpture." Literary historian

Irene Gammel Irene Gammel is a Canadian literary historian, biographer, and curator. Gammel's works critically examine women's contributions to literature and art within the cultural context of the 20th century, shedding light on their experiences, challenge ...

suggested in 2002 that the "female friend" in question was the Baroness. Duchamp never identified his female friend, but three candidates have been proposed: an early appearance of Duchamp's female alter ego Rrose Sélavy, Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, or Louise Norton (a close friend of Duchamp, later married to the avant-garde French composer

Edgard Varèse Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse (; also spelled Edgar; December 22, 1883 – November 6, 1965) was a French and American composer who spent the greater part of his career in the United States. Varèse's music emphasizes timbre and rhythm; h ...

, who contributed an essay to ''The Blind Man'' defending ''Fountain'', and whose address is discernible on the paper entry ticket in the Stieglitz photograph). "It is important to note, however, that Duchamp wrote 'sent' not 'made', and his words do not indicate that he was implying that someone else was the work's creator." The piece is a ready-made apart from the signature.

Death

In 1923, Freytag-Loringhoven went back to Berlin, expecting better opportunities to make money, but instead found an economically devastated post-World War I Germany. Despite her difficulties in the

Weimar Republic The Weimar Republic, officially known as the German Reich, was the German Reich, German state from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional republic for the first time in history; hence it is also referred to, and unofficially proclai ...

, she remained in Germany, penniless and on the verge of insanity. Several friends in the expatriate community, in particular

Bryher Bryher () is one of the smallest inhabited islands of the Isles of Scilly, with a population of 84 in 2011, spread across . Bryher exhibits a procession of prominent hills connected by low-lying necks and sandy bars. Landmarks include Hell Bay, ...

Berenice Abbott Berenice Alice Abbott (July 17, 1898 – December 9, 1991) was an American photographer best known for her portraits of cultural figures of the interwar period, New York City photographs of architecture and urban design of the 1930s, and science ...

, and

Peggy Guggenheim Marguerite "Peggy" Guggenheim ( ; August 26, 1898 – December 23, 1979) was an American art collector, bohemianism, bohemian, and socialite. Born to the wealthy New York City Guggenheim family, she was the daughter of Benjamin Guggenheim, who we ...

, provided emotional and financial support. Freytag-Loringhoven's mental stability steadily improved when she moved to Paris. She died on 14 December 1927 of gas suffocation. She may have forgotten to turn the gas off; someone else may have turned it on; or it may have been an intentional act. She is buried in

Père Lachaise Cemetery Père Lachaise Cemetery (, , formerly , ) is the largest cemetery in Paris, France, at . With more than 3.5 million visitors annually, it is the most visited necropolis in the world. Buried at Père Lachaise are many famous figures in the ...

, Paris. In 1943, Freytag-Loringhoven's work was included in Guggenheim's show '' Exhibition by 31 Women'' at the

Art of This Century gallery The Art of This Century gallery was opened by Peggy Guggenheim at 30 West 57th Street in Manhattan, New York City on October 20, 1942. The gallery occupied two commercial spaces on the seventh floor of a building that was part of the midtown arts d ...

in New York.

Biographies

The Baroness was one of the "characters, one of the terrors of the district," wrote her first biographer

, whose book remained unfinished. In ''Irrational Modernism: A Neurasthenic History of New York Dada'',

Amelia Jones Amelia Jones (born July 14, 1961), originally from Durham, North Carolina, is an American art historian, art theorist, art critic, author, professor and curator. Her research specialisms include feminist art, body art, performance art, video art, ...

provides a revisionist history of

New York Dada New York Dada was a regionalized extension of Dada, an artistic and cultural movement between the years 1913 and 1923. Usually considered to have been instigated by Marcel Duchamp's ''Fountain (Duchamp), Fountain'' exhibited at the first exhibitio ...

, expressed through the life and works of The Baroness. The 2002 biography, ''Baroness Elsa: Gender, Dada and Everyday Modernity'', by

, makes a case for the Baroness's artistic brilliance and avant-garde spirit. The book explores the Baroness's personal and artistic relationships with Djuna Barnes,

, and Jane Heap, as well as with Duchamp, Man Ray, and

William Carlos Williams William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) was an American poet and physician closely associated with modernism and imagism. His '' Spring and All'' (1923) was written in the wake of T. S. Eliot's '' The Waste Land'' (1922). ...

. It shows the Baroness breaking every erotic boundary, reveling in anarchic performance, but the biography also presents her as Elsa's friend

Emily Coleman Emily Holmes Coleman (1899–1974) was an American-born writer and a lifelong compulsive diary keeper. She also wrote a single novel, '' The Shutter of Snow'' (1930). This novel, about a woman who spends time in a mental hospital after the birth o ...

saw her, "not as a saint or a madwoman, but as a woman of genius, alone in the world, frantic." In 2013, the artists Lily Benson and Cassandra Guan released ''The Filmballad of Mamadada'', an experimental biopic on the Baroness. The story of The Baroness' life was told through contributions from over 50 artists and filmmakers. The film premiered at Copenhagen International Documentary Festival and was described as a, "playful and chaotic experiment that posits a return to a grand collective narrative via the postqueer populism of YouTube and crowdsourcing," by

Art Forum ''Artforum'' is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art. The magazine is distinguished from other magazines by its unique 10½ × 10½ inch square format, with each cover often devoted to the work of an artist. Notably ...

Cultural references

The novel ''Holy Skirts'', by

Rene Steinke Rene Steinke is an American novelist. She is the author of three novels: ''The Fires'' (1999), ''Holy Skirts'' (2005), and ''Friendswood'' (2014). ''Holy Skirts'', a novel based on the life of the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, was a fin ...

, titled after Freytag-Loringhoven's poem "Holy Skirts" and a finalist for the 2005

National Book Award The National Book Awards (NBA) are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors. ...

, is based on the life of Freytag-Loringhoven. She also appears in

Siri Hustvedt Siri Hustvedt (born February 19, 1955) is an American novelist and essayist. Hustvedt is the author of a book of poetry, seven novels, two books of essays, and several works of non-fiction. Her books include ''The Blindfold'' (1992), ''The Encha ...

's 2019 novel ''Memories of the Future'' as "an insurrectionist inspiration for ustvedt'snarrator." In August 2002, actress

Brittany Murphy Brittany Anne Murphy-Monjack (; November 10, 1977 – December 20, 2009) was an American actress and singer, known for her work in both comedy and drama. Born in Atlanta, Murphy moved to Los Angeles as a teenager to pursue a career in a ...

dressed as Freytag-Loringhoven in a photoshoot session for ''The New York Times''. In 2019, graphic designer Astrid Seme published ''Baroness Elsa's em dashes. An anthology of dashing in print, poetry and performance.'' The book zooms into the pointed use of em dashes in the poems of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and shows her work in conversation with the likes of well-known dashers such as

Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania (now part of Pittsburgh), and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris in 1903, and ...

Laurence Sterne Laurence Sterne (24 November 1713 – 18 March 1768) was an Anglo-Irish novelist and Anglican cleric. He is best known for his comic novels ''The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman'' (1759–1767) and ''A Sentimental Journey Thro ...

Heinrich von Kleist Bernd Heinrich Wilhelm von Kleist (; 18 October 177721 November 1811) was a German poet, dramatist, novelist, short story writer and journalist. His best known works are the theatre plays ''The Prince of Homburg'', '' Das Käthchen von Heilbronn'' ...

Emily Dickinson Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet. Little-known during her life, she has since been regarded as one of the most important figures in American poetry. Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massac ...

. In 2022 there was a group exhibition dedicated to Freytag-Loringhoven at Mimosa House in London. ''The Baroness'', curated by Daria Khan, featured some of Freytag-Loringhoven's own works, including ''Cathedral'' and ''Enduring Ornament'', which were accompanied by contemporary artist contributions inspired by her. Dutch artist

Barbara Visser Barbara Visser (born 16 August 1977) is a Dutch-Croatian politician of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD). From 31 August 2021 to 10 January 2022, she served as Minister of Infrastructure and Water Management of the Netherlands ...

explored Freytag-Loringhoven's life and art, the question of ''Fountain'''s attribution, as well as broader themes of authenticity, imitation, and authorship in a film in 2023 and a corresponding installation at

Kunsthaus Zürich The Kunsthaus Zürich is an art museum in Zurich. It is the biggest art museum in Switzerland by area and houses one of the most important art collections in Switzerland, assembled over time by the Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft, a nonprofit art soc ...

in 2024 curated by Simone Gehr, both titled ''Alreadymade''.

References

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
University of Maryland Libraries. Retrieved 1 October 2014.

Retrieved 23 August 2013.
University of Maryland Freytag-Loringhoven collection finding aid
Dr. Beth Alvarez. Retrieved 17 June 2013.
University of Manitoba FPG (Greve/Grove) & FrL Collections

''The Little Review'' Collection
Finding-Aid, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

FrL Exhibition, 30 March to May, 2005 {{DEFAULTSORT:Freytag-Loringhoven, Elsa von 1874 births 1927 deaths People from Świnoujście German artists' models Dada German expatriates in the United States Writers from the Province of Pomerania Artists from the Province of Pomerania Bisexual women artists Bisexual poets Bisexual women writers German bisexual women German bisexual artists German bisexual writers German LGBTQ poets Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery 20th-century German women artists 20th-century German women writers 20th-century German poets German women poets German dadaists Wikipedia articles containing unlinked shortened footnotes