Lou Andreas-Salomé (2016)

Göttingen, May 1933. The writer and psychoanalyst Lou Andreas-Salomé (72) lives in Göttingen, ill, lonely, and threatened by the National Socialists. But when the 40-year-old Germanist Ernst Pfeiffer enters her life, reminding her of her great love, Rainer Maria Rilke, she slowly begins to blossom again. Pfeiffer, who reveres Lou, pretends to be seeking psychoanalytic help for a friend, but is actually hoping for help with his own marital problems. In return, he helps her write her memoirs. In flashbacks, the emotional high points of her life come alive again. But Lou does not want to tell Pfeiffer everything... Lou von Salomé is born in St. Petersburg in 1861, the youngest child and only daughter after five sons. She grows up in an upper-middle-class environment but feels like an outsider. She has a difficult relationship with her strict mother, but loves her father all the more. Lou loses her faith in God at an early age. Her father dies when she is 16, and Lou becomes rebellious: she refuses to be confirmed and instead finds herself a private philosophy tutor, Pastor Hendrik Gillot, who becomes a substitute for God and father to the romantic young girl. But the 40-year-old Gillot falls in love with Lou, even though he is married and has two children her age. A traumatic assault follows, along with a marriage proposal—and Lou flees St. Petersburg. She resolves never to marry and to devote her life solely to her intellectual development. Men are never to come too close to her again. Lou is delighted to be allowed to study at the University of Zurich. There she studies obsessively and eventually falls seriously ill with pneumonia. She is sent to Rome to recover. In the salon of women’s rights activist Malwida von Meysenbug, she meets the philosopher Paul Rée. After Lou turns down his marriage proposal, they become friends. Paul Rée introduces Lou to his close friend Friedrich Nietzsche, who recognizes in her his “sibling brain.” Like Paul Rée, he falls unhappily in love with Lou. But Lou persuades the two men to embrace the idea of a platonic household for three, where they can study together. A stay in Tautenburg with Nietzsche ends in disaster for Lou: Friedrich’s sister Elisabeth sees Lou as a threat to her own plans for life, takes moral offense, and drives a wedge between her brother and Lou. Paul Rée and Lou give up on the fickle Nietzsche and live together in Berlin. But Paul Rée suffers from his unrequited love for Lou, is jealous, and keeps tabs on her. While Lou’s first novel is a success, Rée’s academic career fails to advance. Lou can no longer bear their living arrangement. When she meets the Orientalist Friedrich Carl Andreas, she accepts his marriage proposal on the condition that the marriage will never be consummated. Andreas agrees. Deeply hurt, Paul Rée moves out of their shared apartment; they never see each other again. Lou focuses on her writing. She has achieved her life’s goal of intellectual development, but she is not happy. Her bronchitis has become chronic, but she does not take care of herself. She works as if compelled, writing one book after another. When the still-unknown 21-year-old poet Rainer Maria Rilke courts the 36-year-old successful writer, she initially underestimates him. She likes and encourages him, but the young man eventually manages, through his persistent courtship, to break through her defenses and make her break her vow never to fall in love again. Lou now seems to be at peace with herself and the world. But her love for a man 15 years her junior has no future: Rilke clings to Lou and seeks to possess her; he wants her as his lover, muse, and mother. His psychological problems grow worse. Lou eventually ends the relationship. As if to numb herself, she begins to live out her newly discovered love life through a succession of frequent affairs. She puts her life in danger when, after an unwanted pregnancy, she tries to end it by jumping from a tree. Vienna, 1911. Lou seeks advice from Sigmund Freud and wants to learn psychoanalysis herself. On Freud’s couch, she finally recognizes the trauma that has weighed on her since her youth. Göttingen, 1933. A close friendship has developed between Lou and Pfeiffer. Conflict arises when Pfeiffer confronts her with uncomfortable questions and an observation that sums up her difficult relationship with men. She no longer wants to see Pfeiffer and now tries writing on the typewriter herself—but her eyesight is too poor. Lou gets in touch with Pfeiffer again. When Lou receives a summons from the Gestapo, they burn her overly personal diaries and letters together, because Lou’s memoirs are now written—at least the part she wants posterity to know.