Shared Cultural Heritage (Ukraine, Austria, & France)

When France saw Ukraine and Austria sitting together at the conference table, he stopped dead in his tracks. He hadn't seen the female nation's smile for a long time. He'd have thought she had little to smile about since the beginning of the crisis in her country, anyway. But now he saw her smiling. At prim Austria, of all people.

Nosily, he sneaked up on his fellow countries.

'Seriously?', Austria said. 'The members of the City Council even complain about a statue commissioned by a private initiative?'

'Well, the people there are deeply conservative', explained Ukraine. 'At least the older ones. I think they're a bit ashamed of him. They're more fond of promoting other things, like the fact that Lviv was the first European city to introduce streetlights in 1853.'

'I think they're missing out on a branding opportunity', said Austria. 'He may be no Mozart, but his name is known practically all over the world. Well, the last part of his name, in any case.'

So they're talking about a composer, France thought, feeling a little disappointed. How boring.

He was about to turn away, when Ukraine pointed out: 'Oh, perhaps that'll change one day. Some younger people think he's quite interesting. There's even a café named after him.' She chuckled. 'The staff told me men scream more than women during a whipping.'

'What the hell are you two talking about?', France blurted out.

'About a citizen of Lemberg … Lviv with Austrian roots', Austria said innocently.

'About Leopold von Sacher-Masoch and masochism', said Ukraine.

—

Notes:

Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch (1836-1895) was an Austrian writer. Lviv (Львів, German name Lemberg), where he was born, had become Austrian after the First Partition of Poland in 1772. It became Polish again after Austria had lost the First World War in 1918 and Ukrainian after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Sacher-Masoch is probably best known for his novella Venus in Furs (Venus im Pelz, 1870), which examines issues like female dominance and sadomasochism. (All right, the last sentence did it. This is rated to 'T' now.) In his book Psychopathia Sexualis (1886), Viennese psychiatrist Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing (full name Richard Fridolin Joseph Freiherr Krafft von Festenberg auf Frohnberg, genannt von Ebing, 1840-1902) coined the term 'masochism' as a deviant clinical condition, much to the dismay of Sacher-Masoch and his supporters.

I wrote this after reading the article 'City in Ukraine Tied to Masochism Finds Link Painful, Sure, but Some Like It' by Andrew Higgins in The New York Times (14 Nov 2014).