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Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society
Who Makes a Doll of their Ex? | History's Worst Break Ups
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- [00:00]
A
Foreigners. I'm just jumping in here real quick to remind you that if you wanted to come and see Betwixt the Sheets live and in the flesh, you can do so in May. We have got two live events, one in Edinburgh on the 23rd of May and one in London town on the 25th of May. There will be guests, there will be games, there will be smutty history aplenty. Tickets are available now@fane.co.uk that's f a n-e.co.uk and just search for betwixt and we will see you there. Hello, my lovely betwixters, it's me, Kate Lister. You are back once again listening to Betwixt the Sheets. Welcome back. Hello, hello. Let's make some room at the back for the newbies, please. But before we can go any further together, I. I do have to let you know that this is an adult podcast, spoken by adults, other adults, about adulty things in an adulty way, covering a range of old subjects. And you should be an adult too. Oh, we call that the fair dues warning. Because if you keep listening and you happen to get upset, well, fair dues, that one was on you. Right, on with the show. Cheers, my dears, and welcome to the party. The year is 1918. The war is over, champagne is flooded, blowing and artists from all across Vienna have gathered here for another legendary party. The host has opted for chamber music, so the party has somewhat of a ceremonial feel. Over there is the guest of honor, dressed by her maid in the most beautiful clothes and she is a sight to behold. She's absolutely, what is the word that I'm looking for? Terrifying. Yeah, that'll do it. Because the guest of honor tonight is a doll, a human sized, swan skin covered replica of our host's ex girlfriend. Huh? Yeah. This party has just got weird. Foreign. Welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. You might not have heard a whole lot about the artists featured in today's episode. Alma Mala and Oshka Kokoschka. That is so much fun to say. I love saying that all the way through this episode. Try it yourself. Oscar Kokoschka. Oscar Kokoschka. Oh, it's fun. But he may have had a fun name, but he was absolutely bonkers. And these two absolutely deserve their place in our little mini series on history's worst breakups. I mean, look, we've all had messy breakups, haven't we? But have you ever commissioned a life size replica of your Ex. No. Then you're doing better than Oscar and Alma. And today I'm joined by Caitlin Hare to talk about this creepy ass doll and the relationship breakdown that inspired it. What drove Oshka Kokoschka to commission this dollar? Who made it? And, yeah, we're gonna have to ask the question, what did he use it for? Oh, God. Right, let's get over to Vienna. Hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Caitlin here. How are you doing?
- [03:32]
B
I'm doing well. How are you?
- [03:34]
A
I am doing fabulously well because this is the next installment in our little mini series that we're doing on history's worst breakups. And I have so been looking forward to the breakup of Oshka Kokoschka and Alma Mahler. Not. I mean, what good names are those? Oshka Kokoschka?
- [03:50]
B
Yes. They were made to be spoken about, I think.
- [03:54]
A
So now you are an art historian and you work in art galleries. This is your entire baby. This is your life. Do you remember when you first heard about Oskar Kokoschka?
- [04:07]
B
Well, I'd heard about him through all of my art history studies and classes. You know, he's in a lot of museum collections. And we knew that he had this expressionistic style. He's kind of a wild. A wild child. But I didn't quite know just how much that bled into his personal life. And it wasn't until I saw an image of the doll of Alma Mahler, which we will talk about, that I kind of realized there was more to dig into there. And, you know, for as wild as his art is, his life was even crazier.
- [04:47]
A
Is he and Alma Mahler, are they big names outside of the art world today? Because there'll be a lot of people listening to this. They won't know either of those names. So can you just give us a little bit of background? I mean, you said that Oshka Kokoschka is. I can't stop saying it like that. It's so much fun. Can you give us a sense of who he is and who Alma Mahler is? Or was?
- [05:12]
B
Sure. So Oskar Kokoschka wasn't so much fun to say. It's so fun. It's just made to be said on a podcast. I think he was an Austrian painter, artist, playwright, and poet. And he was fairly well known even in his lifetime in artistic circles. He joined the art academy in Vienna fairly young and then was kicked out because his art was so scandalous. And so he was very present. And in the same Circles of a lot of other artists that we would know, such as Gustav Klimt and, oh, the Scream.
- [05:48]
A
That one, Yep.
- [05:50]
B
Or like the Woman in Gold that they made a movie about recently. So he's fairly well known, he's collected widely. His art is still in a lot of collections. Alma, you know, has her own degree of notoriety, but she, I think, is more known for her first marriage with Gustav Mahler, who was a very well known Austrian composer, conductor. They married when she was in her 20s and he passed away in 1911. And he is really like an important foundational figure in music at the time and continued to inspire artists throughout certainly the next several decades. But Alma, again, even in her own time, was very notorious. She married three times. She was the talk of the town. Even starting in her teens, she was considered the most beautiful woman in. In Vienna.
- [06:55]
A
She's a looker. I'd encourage anyone to Google her. She's a very beautiful lady.
- [07:00]
B
She's beautiful. She was witty. She was really well connected. So in her papers and letters, many of which are in Philadelphia, you know, she has correspondence with just kind of any. Any modern composer and musician that you can think of. She was also, you know, there is a journalist at the time who said half the time she was a grand dame and half the time she was a cesspool. So she was. Had quite a reputation that is still being unpacked I think today by historians. So there are people who are trying to say she was a composer in her own right, a musician in her own right, and trying to reclaim that for her.
- [07:44]
A
Yeah, that's something that I've noticed in this little series is that the women's reputation gets very much flattened by being in a bad relationship with some guy normally who's like, you know, quote genius. And then her work, her legacy gets completely subsumed underneath this. Oh, you know, she was like not a femme fatale or like it all went tits up when she was dating this genius. And then that's what she's known for. He fucks off and does a load of other stuff. That's what happened with Byron and Lady Caroline Lamb.
- [08:16]
B
Oh, yes. Also notorious.
- [08:18]
A
Also notorious, right, yeah. So Oshka Kokoschka, would we say he was a looker, Strong jawline, striking.
- [08:27]
B
I would say striking. Striking.
- [08:29]
A
That's a nice way of putting it.
- [08:31]
B
And I would also say just his reputation really did precede him in 1918. 1919. People thought that he had lost his mind because of the doll incident, which we will talk about.
- [08:43]
A
We'll get to the doll. But like pre dull was he, Was he out there? Were people kind of, you know, like, maybe if you saw him phoning, calling you and he saw this number come up, you might just like not answer it. Is it that kind of like, is he a wildman? What's he doing?
- [08:58]
B
Yeah, it's about 50, 50. So if you were yourself really interested in the avant garde and you wanted to push the limits of what society was telling you you could do and what art was like, the art schools at the time were telling you you could do, you loved Kokoschka. You loved how cutting edge his plays were. You loved how intense his artwork was. And then if you had more old fashioned tastes, you did not like him at all. So there's a great story that Archduke Ferdinand saw an exhibition of Kokoschka's work and said, I want to break every bone in his body. Like, this man should not be.
- [09:38]
A
What's he doing? Can you describe, like, what's his style?
- [09:42]
B
Yeah, his style is moody. It's when I think of him, I think of these thick brushstrokes, like, really? And there were some critics who said that it looked like his subjects were just bleeding into the paint. Like he really focused on the emotional intensity. He wanted you to feel something and he wanted you as a viewer to come away with like deep emotional resonance to the work. So lots of gestural movement in the paint, lots of swirls. He didn't care so much about getting a perfect portrait of a person. He wanted to really capture, capture, like their aura, as the kids would say today in the paint, I guess, because.
- [10:29]
A
Today it takes a lot to shock us in art today. And the stuff that is considered shocking today is really quite like, oh, wow. So when we look at something in the context of the time, and this is early 20th century today, it looks quite like I'm looking at some of his paintings now and they seem, you know, there's a bit of nudiness going on, but in general, like, they look quite beautiful to me. This is of it. This has got that expressionist, it's got that slight Picasso Y thing going on. To me it doesn't look shocking. So could you explain to us what was shocking?
- [11:00]
B
Sure. So we have to remember when he's painting sort of the 19 teens, when a lot of his really well known work was being created, we're just coming into modernism and postmodernism. So the fact that he would paint him and Alma together, they weren't married, she's half naked, Their expressions like if you look at their faces, you can't even really see their eyes. They're kind of hollowed out. And the paint doesn't look clean and smooth. It looks very. There's a lot of layers of paint that makes it look jagged and kind of textural and rough, which was just not what was being shown at the time.
- [11:42]
A
And I guess if you've never seen anything like this before, if, like, what you're used to is that Victorian or like, you know, the Old Masters, and it's like that kind of almost not quite photo realism, but that real classical. And then you see this. Yeah, that does look very different, doesn't it? Yes.
- [11:58]
B
And to be clear, you know, this was a time, especially in Vienna in the arts, where there was a lot of boundary pushing. And I think because Kokoschka, some could call him histrionic in how he presented himself and his interactions with people. I think his behavior also lent this air of this wild man who was kind of unhinged and unmoored by nice society.
- [12:23]
A
Okay, tell us. Give us some examples. Like, what kind of unhinged. We'll keep the Alma Mahler stuff. But, like, what were the stories going around him at the time?
- [12:32]
B
I mean, there's. There's so many. And, of course, so many of. Of my stories right now are about Alma and him, so it may be worth thinking about him in the context of that relationship for some of his crazier stories. But he was taken under the wing of some other artists and architects who really were intrigued by how he just didn't seem to care for the rigid hierarchy of who he was. He needed money, he was working in these circles, but he just didn't behave well, shall we say?
- [13:11]
A
Yeah, okay. Like a kind of a bit of a social grenade. Like if you threw him into a social situation, he wouldn't behave himself.
- [13:19]
B
Yeah. So a good example is the first time he met Alma. They're at a party being hosted by her stepfather. There's a commission on the line. Her stepfather wanted him to paint Amma's portrait, and he sees her and immediately kind of scoops her up into this hug that she said was actually kind of violent and startling.
- [13:39]
A
Oh, yeah. That is a bit weird, isn't it? That.
- [13:40]
B
Yeah. You know, just very much not.
- [13:42]
A
Steady on.
- [13:43]
B
Yes, yes. So he seems to have not really cared about how he was viewed.
- [13:54]
A
I'll be back with Caitlyn and the Doll after this short break. And what about Alma Mahler? So you said that she. She was married and then he died. Does she have a reputation as a bit of a wild one at this point. Is she running around parties, hugging random people?
- [14:27]
B
She has a reputation. So even when, before her marriage, she was known as this beautiful woman, men were lining up already to court her and date her. But at the same time, she was really talented. She was in these artistic circles. Her parents were an artist and a singer. So she was already really ingrained in society. And when she became a widow after the death of her first husband in 1911, it seems that pretty immediately people were lining up to want to be the next husband, the next boyfriend. We know that she kind of didn't take kindly to that. I think she. She didn't seem to respond very well to all of that.
- [15:12]
A
No. She's a new widow. Presumably she inherited his money. She's, you know, she doesn't need to rush into anything right away.
- [15:22]
B
Yeah, exactly. So at the end of her first marriage, she had embarked on an affair with the architect Walter Gropius.
- [15:30]
A
Another excellent name.
- [15:32]
B
Yes, excellent names abound. Here they really are. And he blew up that relationship. He revealed the affair to her first husband. There was brilliant.
- [15:44]
A
What a nice guy. Right?
- [15:46]
B
Of consternation there. Sigmund Freud got involved. He was giving the first husband advice on how to make her happy and how to imagine, like, things have got.
- [15:57]
A
So bad in your relationship. Sigmund Freud shows up. That is a marker, isn't it? That's her. Wow.
- [16:03]
B
Yes. So her reputation certainly hadn't reached the peaks that it would after her first marriage. But we know that there was something in the water there. There was definitely some. Some whispers, some chatter.
- [16:16]
A
Okay. Okay. So you've said they met at a party, and he does this weird thing of, like, literally picking her up in a bear hug, which would be weird today in the year of our Lord 2026. That would raise a few eyebrows, let alone. When was this. This was like.
- [16:32]
B
This was in 1912.
- [16:34]
A
1912. Right. Okay. So, yes, it's very weird at this point.
- [16:38]
B
It's very weird.
- [16:40]
A
Do we have any recollection of how Alma felt about this? Was it like love at first sight? Was it passion? Or did she just. Was she just like, what a dick? And then it kind of, you know, like she grew on her after a while?
- [16:51]
B
No, it was very quick. So she noted in her diaries, the hug was weird. It was violent. It was strange. That very day, he wrote her what she called the most beautiful love letter she'd ever received. And I think it was pretty immediate. After that, they were bombing. Yeah, they were head over Heels for each other, and very quickly entered into this very passionate, intense relationship. He wrote her hundreds of letters. She characterized the three years of their relationship as, yeah, isn't very long, but very intense. And she said it was a battle of love. Never before have I felt so much strife and so much hell in a relationship so intense right off the bat.
- [17:34]
A
I'm always hesitant to call these relationships passionate because it's like, when you sort of, like, drill down into it, you're like. Actually, there was. Abusive might be closer to the mark, but I have read that. So you've got this very, very volatile personality in Kokoschka, and I've read that he was also hella jealous. So you've got somebody who doesn't respect boundaries, somebody who is also very jealous and very volatile. Like, all right. Like, you know, it's very much a mixed bag. She's having a great time one day. But there are downsides to this, and what do they look like?
- [18:06]
B
So the downsides are numerous. As you mentioned, he was very jealous. He would stalk her. He would be outside of her house at all hours of night. He would whistle so that if there was a man inside the house with her, which he always thought that there were, he would whistle so that they couldn't relax or get comfortable.
- [18:25]
A
That's bonkers, isn't it? That's really weird.
- [18:28]
B
It must have been so disruptive for her just even to try to. I know.
- [18:31]
A
How's she supposed to have sex with other people while he's outside? Was she. Was she having sex with other people? Do we know sex?
- [18:39]
B
Maybe not. We know that she was still writing and engaging in correspondence with Walter Gropius, who she had been with previously. And so we know that she was keeping this relationship with Kokoschka hidden from Gropius. He does find out about it because Kokoschka paints this double portrait of him and Alma, and he exhibits it in 1913 at an exhibition where Gropius is on, like, the organizing committee. So he sees it.
- [19:11]
A
Wow. Okay, so Marla likes the crazies, doesn't she? She's now had two relationships where the guy blew the lid on it. Mr. Gropius just announcing to her husband, and then Kokoschka, who paints a portrait of them and then exhibits it. Like, where he's gonna see it. Right? Okay.
- [19:28]
B
Yes.
- [19:29]
A
Interesting.
- [19:30]
B
We know because Amma will say this. She loves Gen. She loves people that she views as really talented. So it does seem like, for her, with that, it comes along with these big personalities, the tortured genius Motif. The tortured genius motif, Definitely.
- [19:48]
A
Right. Okay. So he's. He's hanging around a house, he's whistling. He is painting nude paintings of her and him. Was this public knowledge that they were in this relationship? I mean, I guess it is. If he's painting, yes.
- [20:01]
B
There were. There were certainly salacious rumors about it. And we know there's one specific instance where there was a rumor printed in the newspaper that they had been seen flirting during a performance of her deceased husband's piece of music. And she denied that. We don't think that actually happened, but people were certainly aware of the relationship. And, I mean, kokoschka made some 450 works of art, drawings, paintings, sketches of her. So it was hard to ignore the fact that she was his meat.
- [20:43]
A
I submit 400 portraits in evidence, you, Honor. That's okay. Yeah.
- [20:47]
B
Yes. Yes. Alma at one point wrote, you know, he just painted me, me, me. He just painted her over and over again. That.
- [20:55]
A
Callie, that's so. Like, how would you react to that? That feels suffocating to me, just hearing you talk about it.
- [21:02]
B
Yeah. It's not my ideal dream relationship, I shall say. And we know that towards the end of their, again, short relationship, she did feel like it was all a bit too much. We can see in her letters towards the end that she's pulling away from him. She's not responding to him, and he's writing to her saying, like, sure would be great to get a letter from you. It sure would be nice to hear from you. And she would respond and just be, like, very dismissive and mean. And then they would reunite and have this intensely emotional, but also a very physical, intensely physical relationship.
- [21:43]
A
See, this is the thing. When the sex is good, you're in a lot of trouble. I've seen that so many times.
- [21:50]
B
Yes.
- [21:51]
A
Was he seeing anyone else or was he all mala, mala, mala?
- [21:55]
B
At this point, he was all in on Alma. He was. Was proposing to her left and right. It seems like he really wanted her to become his wife. He asked her stepfather for permission, and he gave it. You know, he seems a little like he, you know, there's a lot to say by, I think, other smart historians about that relationship. And she kept turning him down to the point where at one instance, Kokoschka puts in the newspaper an announcement of when their wedding is going to be, thinking it would force her hand, and she just leaves town and she stays out of town until the date of this wedding has passed.
- [22:33]
A
I was gonna ask you, why do you think she keeps turning him down? But I feel like you have kind of answered that already. But why do you think that she wasn't interested in making this man her husband?
- [22:44]
B
She was scared. She wrote that she was scared of his violent streak. She worried that he had more violent tendencies. She thought he was also childish. And she thought even, you know, she loved his genius. She thought he was a just a talented painter and that he would go far. But I think towards the end especially, his personality just was off putting to her. And she dreaded. She wrote that she dreaded having his children. She did not want to have children with him. She did get pregnant at least one time by Kokoschka. And they make a decision, she claims together, to have an abortion. And that just sends him spiraling and kind of spells the end of their relationship, actually, is. Is that decision to have an abortion.
- [23:36]
A
And also there's the outbreak of war, the First World War, which seems to have an impact on this.
- [23:41]
B
That was really, if not the nail in the coffin, it did have a big impact.
- [23:46]
A
So I must have been the only person in the entire world going, thank fuck for that.
- [23:50]
B
That. But her writings at the time, like in 1914, when the war breaks out, are so interesting because she kind of feels like she's so miserable because she's dealing with Kokoschka. She's in love, writing to. To Gropius at the same time that she's kind of like, she knows the war is a big deal, but she's also like, well, I'm also miserable. You know, like, okay, it makes sense that the world is kind of falling apart around me.
- [24:22]
A
But Oskar Kokoschka goes and fights in the war, doesn't he? So he's removed from the situation.
- [24:28]
B
Yes. And while he is removed, he fights on the front lines in Russia. He gets injured, very badly injured. From his telling of it, I think Alma didn't believe that he had been as injured as he probably was. And while he's gone, she marries Gropius in 1915.
- [24:46]
A
Oh, she goes for Gropius.
- [24:48]
B
Yes. Yes. So that is the. The end of their romantic relationship is when he finds out that she's married this other man. And he's devastated.
- [24:59]
A
Right. Okay. So he. He returns from the front, terribly injured, presumably thinking, well, at least I can go back to my one true love. When does he find out that she has. Does she tell him. Does she write him a letter and give him a heads up?
- [25:12]
B
Um, I don't think she wrote him a letter. I think he heard from. From mutual friends and from other people.
- [25:18]
A
So that's that would hurt.
- [25:20]
B
It would hurt. And he, you know, we have a letter in 1918 that he writes to her and passes along through a friend where he says, basically like, I'm still just as in love with you as I was the last time I saw you. And she seems to consider for a brief moment her, her relationship with Gropius at that point is kind of rocky. And then she says, actually no, like I don't want to re. Enter this relationship.
- [25:47]
A
Okay, okay. And the question then becomes, how did Kokoschka deal with this rejection? Did he have a brief period of mourning and then moved on? Did he do some self reflection, have some therapy, maybe go on holiday with his mates?
- [26:05]
B
You know, he did perhaps the opposite of all of that. So he, in 1918, writes to a famed doll maker, Ermine Moose, and he commissions a life size doll to be made of Alma to her specific measurements. And he wants it to be as lifelike as possible. He tells her, I want to be able to touch the body and feel like it's flesh. And he, we just have, we have so many letters that he sent to this, this woman, this doll maker, where he's asking, like, can the mouth be opened? Will it have teeth? Here's what I want the pubic hair to be made out of and here's how I want the skin to feel. And he was, I think, safe to say, obsessed with the idea of this doll.
- [26:57]
A
Could you imagine being Hermione Mood and getting these letters like, you're just running your doll business. Just you're making a decent profit. You're selling to little kids and, you know, and maybe adult collectors. And then this happens. But interestingly, she doesn't say, sling your hook. She doesn't say, I'm reporting this to the police immediately, please leave me alone. She does take on his commission.
- [27:22]
B
She does. And we know that he had asked another doll maker before her and that doll maker turned him down.
- [27:29]
A
Oh, to see those letters.
- [27:31]
B
I know, it's, it's so. But what does end up happening is the doll that she creates and sends back to Kokoschka is so unlike what he has ordered and requested. And we're not quite sure why that is.
- [28:11]
A
Could you describe, I mean, I would encourage everyone now just go and Google it. Just put Alma Mala doll into Google and it will come up. But can you describe what this. And it was supposed to be like a life size Barbie doll, like, you know, like a sex doll, looking like Alma Mahler. Can you just tell us, describe to us what the doll Looked like it's.
- [28:30]
B
Grotesque, I think is it is entirely covered in downy white feathers. The face is misshapen and just very strange looking. And it's stuffed with sawdust. Stuffed with sawdust, yes. Very lumpy. The outside coating is swan skin, which is why it's feathery. And he was so dismayed when he received it. He said it gave my butler a stroke. And he said I wanted to dress it. I wanted to put it in silk and lingerie and I can't. How could I do that? It's like trying to dress a polar bear.
- [29:12]
A
He's got no shame about this at all, does he? He's not like, like trying to conceal what he's. It's like I wanted to put knickers on it and no, I can't.
- [29:19]
B
Yes.
- [29:19]
A
Just they. Oscar my. And I often think, like, where does he have friends around him? Was anybody saying Oscar, like, I know, like, we're all really sad about this, but maybe take this down a notch.
- [29:30]
B
I mean, it doesn't seem like if he was receiving that kind of advice that any of it pushed through. And some of this is exaggerated too, because word got around, you know, people were concerned, especially because it seems like he did at least take the doll out driving with him. He took it to cafes. Some people claimed he even like took it to the opera and he hired a maid to take care of it. And I've never seen images of it clothed. In all of the images it's nude. And you can see very clearly these defined like breast and pubic areas.
- [30:08]
A
Oh, it's got tits. It's got. It's got tits, it's got a face and it's got pewds. But it looks like the Gruffalo. It's the most demented looking thing. But here is the kick. And this is something that art historians are like, really, you know, get in there with. Hermione Moose was a very skilled doll maker. She was like, if she wanted to, she could have made him his Marla Dolly. And she doesn't.
- [30:31]
B
And she doesn't. So some people do think that was her own way of saying, like, screw you, I'm not gonna do this to another woman. And some people just say, you know, it was. There were still wartime shortages and she probably just couldn't get the materials that she wanted.
- [30:46]
A
So we did what I could with what I had.
- [30:48]
B
Yeah, we don't have any of her responses back to him. So her, she's a little silent in the archive as far as that's concerned. So, I mean, I Would love to imagine that she. She sort of did this on purpose and that she was in some way.
- [31:05]
A
I like that reading.
- [31:06]
B
Yeah. I'm trying to protect Alma.
- [31:09]
A
He paints this doll as well. Doesn't he like the way he painted Alma? He paints it obsessively, too.
- [31:14]
B
Yes, he does. And the paintings are almost creepier than the doll itself.
- [31:18]
A
Hella creepy. Yes, they are.
- [31:20]
B
Yes. Because in and I again, I would encourage people to look at photos of the doll. The doll is white and feathery and lumpy. Lumpy. Lumpy's a good word. And in the paintings, there's especially a self portrait that he does with the doll. And he's rendered the flesh kind of human colored, and he's made the face. The face doesn't look fully human, but it's closer to human than the doll itself. So it's a little hard to tell at first glance if it's the doll or if it's Alma kind of splayed in this painting, legs spread, body fully exposed. It's hard to tell at first whether it's the human or the doll.
- [32:04]
A
And he's taken it out and about, and he's dressing it up and he's taking it to cafes and the opera. Caitlyn, do you. Do you think he had sex with the doll, too?
- [32:14]
B
I think he had sex with the doll.
- [32:15]
A
I think he had sex with the doll.
- [32:16]
B
I think he did. Or at least he tried. You know, I think he at least tried. And we know that he had it. We know that he had it. And. But at a certain point, he claims later in life that once he had painted it enough, once he had had it in his life enough, he was done. And it had rendered out all of his passion that he felt for the object and for Alma. So he decides, I'm done with it. I'm gonna do away with it.
- [32:43]
A
But he doesn't even do that in a reasonable way. It's not like the doll just ends up in a wheelie bin to be collected on a Tuesday, is it? What does he do?
- [32:51]
B
No. So he throws a big party. He invites people over, he has music and champagne and he gets wildly drunk, and he takes the doll out to the garden and he beheads it and then throws a whole bottle of red wine on it and just leaves it in the lawn, presumably to go sleep off his hangover. And he claims that he was awoken in the morning by the police because someone thought that the doll beheaded in his yard was a real human woman that he had murdered. Yes.
- [33:24]
A
Amazing. Do we have any information about where the. Where the doll actually ended up? It was disposed of somewhere.
- [33:31]
B
It was disposed of. It was destroyed. We know a modern, like a contemporary artist, has remade the doll. I think that happened in 2008 or something like that. So there is a copy of the doll in existence.
- [33:44]
A
It's deranged, this story.
- [33:46]
B
It's so wild. It's so wild.
- [33:49]
A
Does this help Oscar in any way process? Like, what's. What's the. Actually, before we get to that, did Alma know about this?
- [33:58]
B
We are sure that she did. We know. Again, as I said, we know that he wrote her in 1918 as he was commissioning the doll to try to rekindle the relationship, but she doesn't really acknowledge it. Like, in her autobiography. It's not mentioned. We know that they do. There's some later correspondence from Kokoschka to Amma, like, later in life that I still think is wildly inappropriate. He offers her to make a model of himself with a member that she can take to bed at night with him.
- [34:33]
A
Why, Oscar? Why? Oh, my God.
- [34:37]
B
Yeah. So, you know, at that point, the relationship was done and dusted. We don't really know that was the line. Well, in Alma, I do think, you know, her marriage to Gropius was very rocky. She divorced him in 1920, and she had already had an affair with a poet before that marriage ended. So we know that she was very consumed with her own love life and her own art, you know, the artist that she was trying to help and support financially. And then, of course, there's another war that kind of blows a lot of things up.
- [35:16]
A
Is there anything in her hand about how she felt about this incident? Or does she just avoids talking about it and skirts around it for the rest of her life?
- [35:25]
B
Not that I've seen. She really doesn't mention it doesn't come up in her autobiography. At least we know that she does keep paintings that Kokoschka has made of her. She keeps those until the end of her life and to the end of her life. She says, he's a genius. So the doll incident didn't kill that before her.
- [35:50]
A
Wow. Yeah, that is some. That is some messy, messy stuff there. If that's not. The line was like, actually, I think this is the time to go. No contact. What about Oscar, then? Did he make any more dolls of anyone else? Did he? Oh, hello, Pusscats. He's just walked into view.
- [36:11]
B
Yeah, perfect.
- [36:11]
A
Beautiful. No, we love it. We love it when cats turn up.
- [36:15]
B
He loves a zoom call. Sorry.
- [36:17]
A
They all do. But do We. Do we have any sense of, like, did he get healthy after this? Did he find a nice girl and settle down and never do anything mad again, like, what happened to him?
- [36:29]
B
So we know that he traveled extensively through Europe, North Africa, the Middle east in the 1920s and 30s. He returns to Vienna in 1931, but moves to Prague in 1935 as a result of the Nazis growing power. And in 37, the Nazis condemn him as a degenerate artist. So he ends up actually fleeing to England during the Second World War. And he does marry when he's in his 50s, to. Seems like a nice, younger woman who was with him for the rest of his life. And he likewise painted her, seemed very happy with her, and he continued to create art and be well respected. I think he died in 1980 in Switzerland. So he lived a good long life of creating art and being well known.
- [37:19]
A
As a final question, then, I mean, this is a messy breakup. This is like, you know, everyone's had bad breakups, but this is next level stuff. This isn't a healthy processing of the breakdown of relationships whatsoever. But do you think there was anything good to come out of their relationship?
- [37:36]
B
Oh, I mean, I think even Alma herself would say that the art that came out of their relationship was worth creating. I think it's hard to say. Her reputation was very complicated in her life. And afterwards, like, she was really, I think, again, known as this, like, eloquent, witty woman who also just had these terrible relationships and couldn't stop entangling herself with terrible men, I think she would say, and I think Kokoschka would say the art is the good that comes from it. And the pushing. He continued to just push forward the limits of artwork for the rest of his career. And, you know, I don't necessarily think it excuses anything, but Amma would say the fact that his artistic genius was given so much from her being his muse was what it was worth.
- [38:36]
A
Yeah, I think we got some nice paintings. Yeah, you're right. She would definitely say that. But I think the lesson to take away from this is just don't make dolls of people that you're breaking up with.
- [38:46]
B
Absolutely. Absolutely. Don't make dolls.
- [38:51]
A
Don't make them out of swanskin and sawdust.
- [38:54]
B
No. And don't carry them around with you and take them to parties.
- [39:00]
A
Please don't do that. And then behead them in the garden. All of that. Don't do that. But you can do nice paintings.
- [39:07]
B
Yes.
- [39:07]
A
Caitlin, you have been wonderful. Thank you so much for coming by to tell us this. Completely bonkers story. And if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? Are you on social media?
- [39:18]
B
I am. So I'm mostly on substack these days. Caitlinhair H O E R R at Substack. And that's the best place to find me.
- [39:27]
A
Fabulous. Well, thank you so much for coming by. You've been an absolute hoot.
- [39:31]
B
Oh, no, thank you. This was so fun. I love talking about these crazy kids.
- [39:40]
A
Thank you for listening. And thank you so much to Caitlin for joining me. And if you like what you heard, get therapy. That's what I would say. I'd say, so get some therapy right now. But if you like the podcast in general, then don't forget to like, review and follow along whatever it is you get. Your podcasts. Coming up, we've got the final installment of our little mini series on history's worst breakups. And this time we're in Renaissance Rome with the Naughty Borgias, featuring a bit of incest and a whole lot of impotence. And if you'd like us to explore a subject or if you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us@betwixtistoryhit.com this podcast was edited by Hannah Theodorov and produced by Sophie G. The senior producer was Freddie Chick. Join me again. Betwixt the Sheets the History of Sex Scandal in Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.