Baladine Klossowska

Baladine Klossowska (Polish: Balladyna Klossowska, born Elisabeth Dorothea Spiro, * 1886 in Breslau, † 1969 in Paris) was a painter, daughter of the cantor of the Wroclaw White Stork Synagogue, Abraham Baer Spiro ( 1833-1903 ), sister of the painter Eugene Spiro (1874-1972), mother of the painter Balthus ( Balthasar Klossowski, 1908-2001 ) and the painter and writer Pierre Klossowski ( 1905-2001 ), wife of the painter and art historian Erich Klossowski ( 1875-1949 ). After marriage, she changed her first name by Baladine ( based on a drama by Juliusz Słowacki ) and moved to Paris. There she gave birth to her two sons.

After the outbreak of the Second World War, she was forced to leave as a German citizen of France. In 1917 she was separated from her husband and then settled in Switzerland, first to Bern in Geneva with her two sons. In 1922, she came with the sons to Berlin in 1924 to Paris, where they lived in poverty, dependent on the material help of their friends.

In 1919, she had met the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. Their passionate affair lasted until the death of the poet 1926.

Their final resting place is located in the Cimetière Parisien de Bagneux in the Paris suburb Bagneux.