Priestess of Morphine: The Lost Writings of Marie-Madeleine in the Time of Nazis

Marie-Madeleine was a German Jew, lesbian poet and novelist whose eroticism and love for morphine was revealed in many of her shocking, sensational, and bestselling books of the early twentieth century. Born Gertrud Gunther, and starting at age 15 she wrote over 46 books until 1932 when Nazis condemned her work as degenerate. In 1943 she entered a sanatorium for morphine addiction where she died a mysterious death while under the care of Nazis doctors.

Priestess of Morphine: The Lost Writings of Marie-Madeleine contains many of this fascinating woman's works, translated for the first time into English, and also contains Stephen J. Gertz's Foreword explaining why Marie-Madeleine has become a rediscovered heroine of lesbian and drug literature. Fascinating images from Marie-Madeleine's lost literature and career supplement this volume.

Editor Ronald K. Siegel is known for his classics in drug literature, including Intoxication: Life in Pursuit of Artificial Paradise and Whispers: The Voices of Paranoia.

Marie Madeleine: aka Baronness Von Puttkamer, 1881-1944. In her time, under the name of Marie Madeleine, she established a name for herself as a writer of unusually lyrical, stunningly sensual, shockingly erotic and hotly passionate poetry and prose. She enjoyed immense popularity during her lifetime, and her books were published in the thousands. But because she was considered a degenerate by the Nazis, most of them were destroyed. Despite the obvious threat to her work and even her personal safety, she continued writing in defiance of the Nazi mores.

Ronald K. Siegel, Ph.D, [Preface, Historical Notes, Introduction]
Dr. Siegel is a psychopharmacologist and former research professor at UCLA School of Medicine, author of several books including the acclaimed Intoxication, numerous journal articles based on translations of lost and forgotten works in drug literature, and currently curator of the RKS Library of Drug Literature holding the world’s largest collection of Marie-Madeleine’s work.

Eric A. Bye, M.A. Bye has translated over 100 nonfiction books (French, German, Spanish) and is the first to translate Marie-Madeleine’s lost work from both Fraktur (Old German blackletter typeface) and Sutterlin-Schrift (Old German handwriting) to English.