Andreas-Salomé, Lou (St Petersburg, 1861-1937, Göttingen), the daughter of a Russian general (von Salomé) of Baltic-German descent, spent a sheltered childhood in St Petersburg, but reacted early against social conventions. From 1880 she studied theology, philosophy, and history of art in Zurich, until serious illness necessitated her removal to the milder Italian climate. Shortly after her arrival in Rome she was unexpectedly brought into contact with Nietzsche, and from May to November 1882 they enjoyed a close friendship. Their conversation tended to turn on religion, to her a lifelong preoccupation which prompted her first work, Kampf um Gott (1885). Her study of Friedrich Nietzsche in seinen Werken appeared in 1894, her correspondence with Nietzsche and Paul Rée in 1970. The friendship with Rée, a philosopher influenced by Schopenhauer, lasted about five years. Her unorthodox marriage in 1887 to the orientalist F. C. Andreas gave her a home in Berlin until 1903 when Andreas took up an appointment in Göttingen; they moved to a house outside the city where she remained after his death in 1930.

In Berlin she established contacts with writers connected with the Freie Bühne, including G. Hauptmann, and published articles and a book on Hendrik Ibsens Frauengestalten (1892). She also established herself as an author of fiction, including Ruth (1895), Aus fremder Seele (1896), Fenitschka (1898), and Menschenkinder (1899). These are in an unusually cryptic way partly autobiographical and point to her individual conception of a woman's emancipation, the subject of a number of her articles, notably ‘Ketzereien gegen die moderne Frau’ (1899 in Die Zukunft) and ‘Der Mensch als Weib (Ein Bild im Umriß)’ (1899 in Die Neue Rundschau), linking her only loosely with socially committed feminist movements. In 1897 Rilke, then aged 22, was introduced to her in Munich. He had known of her through her essay Jesus der Jude (1896); to be near her he took up residence in Berlin until the winter of 1900-1 when he realized that he could not win her back after she had left him in August 1900. Through her influence he studied Russian literature and language, resulting in two joint visits to Russia. On the first, from April to June 1899, Andreas accompanied them; the second, from May to August 1900, they undertook alone. Her book Rainer Maria Rilke (1928) appeared two years after his death; their correspondence, Briefwechsel, in 1952 (ext. 1975). While the profound effects of his Russian experience showed in the first part of Das Stunden-Buch, she reacted differently by creating two contrasting mother figures, the one being central to her sensitive story Ma (1901), the other to her novel Ródinka (not published until 1923).

Im Zwischenland (1902) and Die Erotik (1910) exemplify her deepening interest in psychology. She first met Freud in 1911, and in October 1912 went for six months to Vienna, where her concentrated study of psychoanalysis marked the beginning of Freud's lasting friendship with her. Mein Dank an Freud (1931) is her tribute to him; her diary from the period 1911-12, In der Schule bei Freud, appeared in 1958. In her stories Drei Briefe an einen Knaben (1917) and Die Stunde ohne Gott und andere Kindergeschichten (1922) she is mainly concerned with problems of childhood and puberty. Aware of her particular analytical gifts, she became increasingly professionally involved, leaving her no time for narrative writing. She contributed articles to specialist periodicals, including Imago, and under the impact of the war became a successful psychotherapist, an occupation to which she brought much of her own finely tuned perception and empathy.

Posthumous publications, all of which were edited by E. Pfeiffer, include a volume consisting of Die Tarnkappe, a sequel to the scenic arrangement Der Teufel und seine Großmutter (1922), and two prose pieces, published in 1981. During her last years she wrote her autobiography, Lebensrückblick. Grundriß einiger Lebenserinnerungen (1951, ext. 1968), and a diary (from January 1934 to June 1936), Eintragungen (1982). By co-ordinating religious, philosophical, and physiological experience, she represents a distinct cultural trend of the late 19th c. and early 20th c.

The Oxford Companion to German Literature. Copyright © 1976, 1986, 1997, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.