Eva von Sacher-Masoch - Biography

Eva von Sacher-Masoch Baroness Erisso (1912–1991) was an Austrian aristocrat.

Born Eva Hermine von Sacher-Masoch, Freiin Erisso she was the grand-niece of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch and the mother of Marianne Faithfull. She was born in Budapest, when it was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Her parents were Artur Wolfgang, Ritter von Sacher-Masoch (1875–1953) and his wife Flora. She was the sister of renowned novelist Alexander von Sacher-Masoch (1901–1972) with Jewish ancestry on her maternal side. Erisso spent her early childhood living on her family's estates near the town of Karansebes in Transylvania, now part of Romania, moving with her family to Vienna in 1918. As a young woman she moved to Berlin where she worked as a ballerina for the Max Reinhardt Company, and danced for productions of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. At the outbreak of World War II, Erisso returned to her parents' home in Vienna and lived there for the duration of the war. Despite their Jewish ancestry, Erisso and her mother were afforded a degree of protection from the Nazis due to Artur's World War I military record and his status as a well-regarded Austrian writer (under the pseudonym Michael Zorn). Having opposed Hitler since the Anschluss, and witnessing atrocities against Jews in the streets of Vienna, Erisso and her parents used their home to conceal Socialist pamphlets, narrowly evading detection by the Gestapo. Erisso witnessed the USAAF daylight raids on Vienna from 1944 onwards, and the Soviet Red Army assault on Vienna in 1945. When the British arrived to occupy part of the liberated city, Erisso fell in love with Major Robert Glynn Faithfull, a British army officer and spy who called on the family to inform them that Alexander von Sacher Masoch was alive. The couple married in 1946 and late that year had their only child, daughter Marianne Faithfull (born Marian Evelyn Faithfull), and lived together at Braziers Park, Oxfordshire, before separating six years later. She also spent some time as a dance teacher at "Bylands", Stratfield Turgis, Nr Basingstoke, Hants, UK, a boarding school for maladjusted children.

She is buried in Saint Mary's churchyard, Aldworth, Berkshire, England.