Three extraordinary women from Vienna's golden age have long been overshadowed by their famous male partners, reduced to the limiting label of 'muse.' A new book challenges this narrative, revealing the remarkable creativity, strength, and independence of fashion designer Emilie Flöge, journalist Milena Jesenská, and writer Veza Canetti during the transformative period from 1900 to 1938.
There may be no more irritating label for a woman beside a prominent artist than being called his 'muse.' This designation almost always represents a demotion, as a muse is characterized by passivity and inconspicuousness, working inspirationally and emotionally from the background to support the celebrated genius at her side. If she is creative herself, it's clear she's merely the talented assistant. If she achieves success, she's considered the student of her famous partner.
History knows countless such relationships, artistic partnerships, or marriages that ended with women abandoning their own careers to enable their husband's fame by organizing his daily life. The list is long and depressing. As the satirical magazine Simplicissimus wrote in 1901: 'You see, Miss, there are two types of female painters: those who want to marry and those who also have no talent.' Writer Peter Altenberg expressed similar sentiments to Lina Loos: 'A woman must be for us like a mountain forest, something that directly elevates and frees us, something that gently guides us to our own heights like a fairy guides a lost wanderer.'
Rarely did couples defy the gender roles of their time. In his new book 'From Light into Darkness,' Belgian-born author Kris Lauwerys presents three women from Vienna who are primarily known as partners of famous men, but who distinguished themselves through strength, creative power, autonomy, and determination in a conservative-patriarchal society. These women were fashion creator Emilie Flöge, journalist Milena Jesenská, and writer Veza Canetti, whose names are forever linked with Gustav Klimt, Franz Kafka, and Elias Canetti respectively.
Lauwerys, who received the State Prize for Literary Translation in 2024 and works as a bookseller and translator in Vienna, writes that these three heroines, who most likely never met personally, were long dismissed as muses or girlfriends. 'But Flöge is, as will be shown, far more than the image Gustav Klimt created of her. Likewise, Jesenská is not just the woman to whom Kafka wrote love letters. And Veza Canetti unjustly stands in the shadow of the Nobel Prize winner who became her husband.'
Emilie Flöge, born in 1874, saw her formal education end at 14, as was typical for girls of her era due to limited educational opportunities for women. She and her sisters Pauline and Helene became seamstresses and came into contact with the Klimt brothers, Gustav and Ernst. Emilie quickly discovered that sewing could be more than housework—she had artistic ambitions. Her secret relationship with the charismatic Gustav Klimt, already a successful artist and notorious womanizer, began to flourish.
By age 24, Emilie had become a fashion designer, opening her own salon with her sisters. Away from ready-made clothing, they presented their own designs, discovering a niche between luxury fashion and cheap mass production. Emilie wanted to put her stamp on the fashion of the time—clothes as statements that would make women feel comfortable. This reform fashion represented a revolution. For her, marriage meant an obstacle to self-realization. Fighting for Klimt's love never occurred to her, as his thoughts were constantly with other women. Thus she retained her freedom to go her own way.
Milena Jesenská, the Prague-born woman who would be inundated with letters, telegrams, and correspondence cards from Franz Kafka in 1920-21, was just 24 years old, married, and living as a journalist and translator in Vienna. She moved in circles of literati and intellectuals and was accepted in this difficult terrain for women. Against her father's will, she had married and moved to Vienna, leading an uncertain existence there. Her husband, a coffeehouse intellectual and womanizer, didn't care for her. The open marriage, which became a permanent crisis, nearly drove her to madness.
Estrangement and existential anxiety shaped Milena's life and her texts. 'I thought I would go crazy from sheer suffering, longing, and terrible love of life,' she wrote. This distinguished her from Kafka—this unmistakable zest for life. Her relationship with the already seriously ill poet became the focal point of her life. His letters, which soon took on an intimate character and in which he confessed his love, fears, and desperation, belong to the most beautiful in love letter literature. He didn't dare to live his love, so she remained his imagined beloved. Through the letters to Milena, her first name was carried into the world.
A relationship can also begin with intellectual jealousy. Twenty-seven-year-old Veza Taubner, a typical assimilated Viennese Jew, was a fervent follower of Karl Kraus, and for the aspiring writer, he was the greatest inspiration. By the 1920s, it had become easier for women to be seen as intellectually and artistically equal. The seven-years-younger chemistry student Elias Canetti viewed Veza's education and brilliance with envy, feeling inferior as he had published nothing yet. Veza was already networked with left-wing intellectuals, ideologists of Red Vienna, writing for the respected Workers' Newspaper and publishing stories under pseudonyms, establishing herself as one of the most modern authors of her generation.
Veza was as much Elias's muse as he was hers, according to Lauwerys. She agreed to marry Elias on the condition that he should continue to feel as free as before. Such bohemian relationships weren't scandalous in their circles, and he made extensive use of this freedom. 'The two had entangled themselves in an insoluble mutual dependence,' Lauwerys writes.
The fate of all three women was soon overshadowed by the darkness that descended over Vienna in the mid-1930s. They experienced the final downfall of the world familiar to them. In autumn 1938, Veza and Elias had to leave Vienna—Veza would never see Vienna again. Milena Jesenská died in 1944 in the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Already in July 1938, the Flöge sisters' fashion salon had closed its doors. Emilie died in 1952. What remains is the famous portrait that Klimt created of her. To this day, she is called the genius's muse—a label that fails to capture the full scope of her achievements and independence.
