The Whip and the Lamp: Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, the Woman Question, and the Jewish Question

We think we know how the so-called first masochist helped to construct the finde-siècle's idols of perversity. Sacher-Masoch's international review Auf der Höhe, which claimed to raise itself above all partisan politics, reveals the extent to which he sought a more expansive drawing board for his critical imagination. Neither women nor Jews remained static idols of perversity in this imaginative forum. The inconsistencies in their representation were his own unfinished ruminations on the social emancipation of both women and Jews, on the philosophy of religion, and on sexual identity in the late nineteenth century. (BH)