Friedrich Buchmayr - Madame Strindberg

Friend of famous men, wife of the misogynist: the biography of a wild bohemian life

She was married to August Strindberg, had a son with Franz Wedekind, shared the same fate as her “sister” Franziska zu Reventlow and was closely tied to famous men such as Arthur Schnitzler and Karl Kraus. She came from a good Viennese family, was witty and eccentric. In turn of the century Berlin she enjoyed life to the fullest while working as a feature journalist. One of the stars of the scene at the time was August Strindberg, the scandalous Swedish author. The two got married, but their relationship was full of drama and soon failed. The rest of her life was equally dramatic as she moved back and forth between Paris, London and New York. Before her death in Salzburg in 1943, Frida Strindberg published memoirs about her time with Strindberg – “a book without pauses” as Knut Hamsun “delightedly” notes. The same can be said of this first German biography of Frida Strindberg. In texts, photographs and moving personal accounts by Strindberg, we learn more about the eventful and turbulent life of a woman who spared no one, least of all herself.