Author: Freytag-Loringhoven, Elsa von, 1874-1927.

Title: The Else Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven autobiography, ca. 1923-1927: manuscript (in four parts), and typescript [in teo parts, edited by Djuna Barnes]. --

See also: FrL entry in the 1993 "Guide to Major Holdings" (in the UM Archives' Special Collections).

Description: 3 folders (205 p., ca. 180 mss. p.) + Finding aid (1 fld.)

Contents:
Fd. 1-2. Typescript "Elsa" [p.1-99 ; p.100-205]. --
Fd. 3. Mss. 1. First instalment, corresponding to p.1-33 of typescript.
Fd. 3, Mss. 2. Second instalment, corresponding to p.33-72 of typescript.
Fd. 3, Mss. 3. Third instalment, corresponding to p.73-205.
Fd. 3, Mss. 4. Fourth instalment, corresponding to p.73-130 of typescript
(earlier, and different version of the first part of Mss. 3).

Annotation: These papers were obtained in April 1991 from Rare Books & Literary Manuscripts, University of Maryland, College Park, in exchange for a microfilm copy of Felix Paul Greve [alias F. P. Grove]'s novel  Fanny Essler,"1905. -- Special user conditions apply. --

Note:

The Baroness, née Ploetz, divorced Endell, abandoned Greve, lived with FPG (Felix Paul Greve, later F. P. Grove) in Italy, Switzerland, France and Berlin from January 1903 to July 1909, when he faked his suicide to relocate to the USA. -- Else followed him a year later to Pittsburgh. In late 1911, he left her in Sparta, Kentucky, to resurface in Canada as Grove in September 1912. -- Else then moved to New York, where she married Baron Leo in November 1913. As "the Baroness," she soon became a well-known model, poet, and artist in Greenwich Village. She even posed for 1921 New York Dada giants Man Ray & Marcel Duchamp in a film entitled "The Baroness shaving her pubic hair" (see the only known surviving frame in a letter by Man Ray) -- In April 1923, she returned to Berlin, where she started writing her autobiography for her literary agent [and later, executor] Djuna Barnes. -- In March 1926, she managed to rejoin her American expatriate friends of the "Lost Generation" in Paris. There she committed suicide in December 1927. --
Djuna Barnes edited the typescript version from letters and other manuscript narrative instalments she had received in the early twenties. A typed title-page is attached to Mss. 1 in Fd. 3. It reads: "Baroness Elsa: her life and letters / edited with a foreword by Djuna Barnes.""

Local Note: FINDING AID AVAILABLE IN READING ROOM (in folder).

Subjects: Freytag-Loringhoven, Elsa von, 1874-1927
Freytag-Loringhoven, Elsa von, 1874-1927 Relations with men.
Greve, Felix Paul, 1879-1909 Relations with women
Grove, Frederick Philip, 1879-1948 Childhood and youth.
Stefan George Kreis Biography.
Dadaism New York (State) New York.

Other Author(s): Barnes, Djuna

Other Title(s): Baroness Elsa : her life and letters
Holdings: Archival Collection Mss 81