Baroness Elsa
| Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
Else Hildegard Plötz 12 July 1874 Swinemünde, Province of Pomerania, German Empire |
| Died | 15 December 1927 (aged 53) Paris, France |
| Known for | Poetry, sound poetry |
| Notable work | Body Sweats |
| Movement | Dada, avant-garde |
| Spouse(s) | August Endell |
Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (sometimes also called Else von Freytag-von Loringhoven) (12 July 1874 – 15 December 1927) was a German-born avant-garde, Dadaist artist and poet who worked for several years in Greenwich Village, New York City, United States. Her provocative poetry was published posthumously in 2011 in Body Sweats: The Uncensored Writings of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven.The New York Times praised the book as one of the notable art books of 2011.
Freytag-Loringhoven was born Else Hildegard Plötz in Swinemünde (Świnoujście), in Pomerania, Germany, to Adolf Plötz and Ida Marie Kleist. Her father, a mason, physically and verbally abused her in her childhood. She trained and worked as an actress and vaudeville performer and had numerous affairs with artists in Berlin, Munich and Italy.
She studied art in Dachau, near Munich, before marrying in 1901, Berlin-based architect, August Endell, at which time she became Else Endell. She had an open relationship with her husband, and in 1902 she became involved romantically with a friend of Endell's, the minor poet and translator Felix Paul Greve (later the Canadian author Frederick Philip Grove), and all three went to Palermo in late January 1903. They then moved to various places, including Wollerau, Switzerland, and Paris-Plage, France. In 1906, she and Greve returned to Berlin, where they were married on August 22, 1907. In July 1910, she followed Greve to North America, where they operated a small farm in Sparta, Kentucky, not far from Cincinnati, Ohio. Grove eventually left, in 1911, and went west to a bonanza farm near Fargo, North Dakota, and came to Manitoba in 1912. She started modeling for artists in Cincinnati, and made her way east via West Virginia and Philadelphia, before she married her third husband, the German Baron Leopold von Freytag-Loringhoven, in November 1913 in New York. There, she became known as "the dadaist Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven".
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