Bekenntnisse und Erlebnisse
Bekenntnisse und Erlebnisse (Confessions and Experiences) is an autobiographical book by Edith Kadivec in German language that was first published in July 1931 by Avalun-Verlag in Hellerau bei Dresden. It is a revision of her first publication Mein Schicksal. Bekenntnisse von Edith Cadwé (en: My destiny. Confessions of Edith Cadwé) (c. 1926).
Background
Edith Kadivec became the center of a spectacular lawsuit in Vienna in 1924, in which she was found guilty of abusing her students through sexually motivated chastisement. (See the article Edith Kadivec for more on this.)
Confessions and Experiences are a candid and detailed account of Kadivec's life, her sexuality, and her philosophy. The main subject matter is the author's erotic passion about (not necessarily consensual) power exchange, especially in the form of spanking, female dominance, the mother/child, and the teacher/student relationship, and lesbianism. How much of the contents of this book are truthful and how much is partially or fully fictitious is difficult to say and remains open to speculation.
Kadivec was a school and private teacher in Paris and Vienna before her arrest, and was a pedagogue with strong pro-spanking views. She felt that all boys and girls were in need of strict education and guidance and greatly benefited from corporal punishment to develop their minds and character to their full potential. She also believed that this education, guidance, and punishment should be provided by women, not men, as Nature had equipped women with maternal instincts that men can never have.
Sexually, the author was a lesbian, sadomasochist and spankophile. She was also probably to some degree pedophilic and incestuously inclined. In her book, she makes no bones about her paraphilic affections. In fact, she is so open about them that her writings must have shocked her contemporaries. To Kadivec, the erotic pleasures that she found in motherhood, female dominance, sadism, and lesbianism were a higher and more noble form of sexuality than heterosexual vanilla intercourse, which she considered primitive and "animalic", and only good for reproduction. This reflects the author's general misandy (contempt/hatred of men).
Contents
Chapters I-V
In the first chapters, the author details her childhood, family, schooling and education, and her time as a teacher in Paris where she discovered her erotic passion for spanking, dominance, and lesbian love.
Chapters VI-XIV
Vienna, the lawsuit, and imprisonment.
Chapters XV and XVI
Letters 1926 and outlook of a new life period.
Further works and translations
After Bekenntnisse und Erlebnisse, the author wrote a sequel titled Eros, der Sinn meines Lebens (December 1931). Bekenntnisse und Erlebnisse was later also published in English translation under the title Confessions and Experiences (New York, Grove Press, 1971), and the sequel under the title Eros: The Meaning of My Life (New York, Grove Press, 1969).
Newest edition
A new edition of Bekenntnisse und Erlebnisse was published in 2008 by belleville, München: isbn 978-3-923646-84-5 (= isbn 3-923646-84-4)
See also
Links
- Extract from Confessions and Experiences on the A Taste of the Birch blog (Adult site)
- Extracts from the autobiographical works of Edith Kadivec on SAXON Spanking Web (Adult site)
- Confessions and Experiences on BiblioCuriosa
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