Lou Andreas-Salomé

Independent activity 1861–1937 ○ Died of uraemia

Writer who turned down Nietzsche’s proposal and wrote an early study of him; Rilke’s lover and a psychoanalyst of Freud’s circle

Born in St Petersburg in 1861, the daughter of a Huguenot officer who rose to the Russian general staff, she studied as a guest student at Zurich and in Rome in 1882 met Friedrich Nietzsche through Paul Rée. The three dreamed of a commune, but she refused Nietzsche's proposal and, amid Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche's intrigues, parted from him. Married from 1887 to the linguist Friedrich Carl Andreas, she wrote fiction and essays and in 1894 published Friedrich Nietzsche in seinen Werken, a study of his personality and philosophy. From 1897 she was the lover and lifelong adviser of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke; she met Sigmund Freud in 1911 and in 1915 opened the first psychoanalytic practice in Göttingen. Soon after her death in 1937 the Nazis seized her library because she had practised “a Jewish science”.

Also known as: Lou von Salomé · Louise von Salomé · Lou Andreas-Salome