Elsa Asenijeff

Elsa Asenijeff (Elsa Maria Packeny 3 January 1867 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary – 5 April 1941 in Braunsdorf) was an Austrian writer and partner of Max Klinger.

Life

Elsa Maria Packeny came from the Viennese bourgeoisie. Her father (Karl Packeny) was director of the Austrian Southern Railway. Until 1887 she attended the Vienna Teacher Training Center.

After she had refused several marriage proposals, her parents forced her to marry. In 1890 she married the eleven-years-older Bulgarian engineer and diplomat Ivan Johann Nestoroff and went with him to Sofia, Bulgaria. The marriage was not happy. She felt at the mercy of her husband, a theme that influenced her literary works in many ways. In 1896 she wrote a narrative volume Is That Love? using the pseudonym Elsa Asenijeff, which she had chosen in memory of her deceased firstborn son Asen.

In 1896, she divorced Nestoroff and the Bulgarian state allowed her to use Asenijeff as her official name. In 1897 she went to Leipzig, Germany to study philosophy and economics. She left her second son Heraclitus, born in 1896, with her grandparents.

At a Literary Society festival in Leipzig for Detlev von Liliencron (1844–1909) and Frank Wedekind (1864–1918), she met the painter and sculptor Max Klinger (1857–1920). She became a model, muse and lover for him, but Klinger did not make the relationship public. He paid for her expensive apartment in the prestigious Musikviertel neighbourhood (270 m2 (2,900 sq ft) in Schwägrichenstrasse 11, upper ground floor). She accompanied him on numerous trips and worked as a hostess at social events. She was considered an extremely impressive, fascinating, and sometimes even extravagant personality. Their daughter Désirée was born on 7 September 1900, during a longer stay in Paris and she was given to a French foster mother.