Baladine Klossowska or Kłossowska (born in 1886
as Elisabeth Dorothea Spiro, died in 1969) was a European painter. She
was the mother of the artist Balthus and the writer Pierre Klossowski,
and the last lover of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke.She was born Elisabeth
Dorothea Spiro in Breslau, Prussia (now Wrocław, Poland) to a Jewish
family; her father, Abraham Beer Spiro, was a cantor, who moved his
family from Korelichi in Novogrudok district of Minsk Governorate to
Breslau in 1873. In Breslau, he was appointed a Chief cantor of the
White Stork synagogue (pl) (Synagoga pod Białym Bocianem) — one of the
two main synagogues of the city.She married the painter and art
historian Erich Klossowski; the couple moved to Paris, where their sons
were born — Pierre in 1905 and Balthasar in 1908. Elisabeth Spiro
Klossowski pursued her own artistic career under the name Baladine
Klossowska; she preferred life in France and lived there through much of
her later life.The Klossowskis were forced to leave France in 1914, at
the start of World War I, due to their German passports. The couple
separated permanently in 1917; Klossowska took her sons to Switzerland.
They moved to Berlin in 1921 due to financial pressures. Mother and sons
returned to Paris in 1924, where the three lived a materially marginal
existence, often dependent upon help from friends and
relations.Klossowska met Bohemian-Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke
(1875-1926) in 1919. At the time, Rilke was emerging from a severe
depression that had limited his writing to uncollected poems, and a
large number of letters, for several years during and after World War I.
The two had an intense but episodic romantic relationship that lasted
until Rilke's death from leukemia in 1926. Klossowska helped Rilke
establish his residence in Switzerland, and proved a stabilizing force -
in spite of the intensity of their own relationship - during a period
when Rilke sought stability above all. Her sons developed close
relationships with Rilke, and Balthasar published his first book of
watercolors about a lost cat, Mitsou, with text by Rilke. In 1921, Rilke
had written in what he called "a savage creative storm" his two most
important collections of poetry, the Duino Elegies and Sonnets to
Orpheus, both published in 1923. During their romance, Rilke called
Klossowska by the pet name "Merline" in their correspondence—first
published in 1954.
