Berlin Baroness (2014)

The Baroness leads a magnificent, though difficult, life. With a singular strength and vision, she moves between Berlin, Munich, and New York, infiltrating and exposing the still-patriarchal structure of avant garde and Dada circles through her role as painter, poet, sculptor, model, proto-performance artist, and often, lover. She publishes poems in The Little Review at the time that Ulysses was also serialized by the publication and sued for obscenities. Despite her extreme radicalism, she remains very unknown and uncredited, her acts and contributions dismissed as amusing stories. In 1923, Freytag-Loringhoven went back to Berlin, expecting better opportunities to make money, but instead finding an economically devastated post-World War I Germany. Regardless of her difficulties in Weimar Germany, she remained there, penniless and on the verge of insanity.[citation needed] Several friends in the American expatriate community, in particular Djuna Barnes, Berenice Abbott, and Peggy Guggenheim, provided emotional and financial support. Over the next few months Freytag-Loringhoven's mental stability steadily improved in Paris. However, she died on 14 December 1927 of gas suffocation after the gas was left on in her flat. She may have forgotten to turn the gas off, or someone else may have turned it on; the circumstances were never clear.[citation needed] She is buried in Paris, France at Père Lachaise Cemetery.