When I was asked to write a book on Lou Andreas- Salomé, I gladly agreed to do so, partly because this would be my first book ever and I wished to have the experience of writing one, and partly – largely – because of my already strong interest in Friedrich Nietzsche and Rainer Maria Rilke, to both of whom she was in her youth a close and important friend. An interest in Lou Andreas-Salomé herself, and in Sigmund Freud, her third famous friend, developed in the course of my research. Conversations with Lou A-S’s aged surviving friend, Ernst Pfeiffer, in Göttingen, were helpful to me in the writing of this book.

NOTE: The subsequent U.S. publication of my book bore a changed and incorrect title: ‘Salomé’.  This, presumably to be stressed on the vowel ‘o’, was never the name of the subject of my book, nor was there anything about her that could have suggested the story of that cruel dancer, grand-daughter of Herod the Great, who asked to be given, and was given, the head of John the Baptist (Matthew, 14, 1-12).

L.A-S’s given name was ‘Louise’ (generally shortened to ‘Lou’).  She came from an old Huguenot family, hence the surname ‘von Salomé’, in which ‘Salomé’ is stressed on the first syllable and begins with a voiced ‘S’ (English ‘Z’), followed by a long ‘A’ (as in ‘father’).  On marriage, she added her husband’s surname and dropped the ‘von’: thus ‘Andreas-Salomé’.  [‘Andreas’ is stressed on second syllable, so the double surname is amphibrach plus dactyl.]