Leopold Sacher-Masoch

Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch (Austrian German: [ˈleːopɔld fɔn ˈsaxɐ ˈmaːsɔx]; 27 January 1836 – 9 March 1895) was an Austrian nobleman, writer and journalist, who gained renown for his romantic stories of Galician life. The term masochism is derived from his name, invented by his contemporary, the Austrian psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing. Masoch did not approve of this use of his name.

During his lifetime, Sacher-Masoch was well known as a man of letters, in particular a utopian thinker who espoused socialist and humanist ideals in his fiction and non-fiction. Most of his works remain untranslated into English.

Early life and education

Sacher-Masoch was born in the city of Lemberg, the capital of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria (now Lviv, Ukraine), at the time a province of the Austrian Empire, into a Roman Catholic family. His father was an Austrian civil servant, Leopold Johann Nepomuk Ritter von Sacher, and his mother Charlotte Josepha von Masoch, a Ukrainian noblewoman. The father later combined his surname with his wife's von Masoch, at the request of her family (she was the last of the line). Sacher served as a Commissioner of the Imperial Police Forces in Lemberg, and he was recognised with a new title of Austrian nobility as Sacher-Masoch awarded by the Austrian Emperor.

Leopold studied law, history and mathematics at Graz University (where he obtained a doctorate in history in 1856), and after graduating he became a lecturer there.

Galician storyteller

His early, non-fictional publications dealt mostly with Austrian history. At the same time, Masoch turned to the folklore and culture of his homeland, Galicia. Soon he abandoned lecturing and became a free man of letters. Within a decade his short stories and novels prevailed over his historical non-fiction works, though historical themes continued to imbue his fiction.