'Dearest Kraut': Ernest Hemingway's bizarre and intense sex letter to Marlene Dietrich up for auction for $55,000

An innuendo-filled letter from the American author to the German-born actress is up for auction

The couple met in 1934 and their friendship lasted until he committed suicide in 1961

Although their 'love affair' was never consummated, they corresponded through a series of at least 30 flirty letters and telegrams over the years

An innuendo-filled letter sent from Ernest Hemingway to Marlene Dietrich, in which the author imagines performing a surreal sex act onstage with the German-born actress and singer, is up for auction.



Hemingway’s letter to the Hollywood star is dated August 28, 1955, and begins affectionately, ‘Dearest Kraut.’



The odd couple met while traveling across the Atlantic on the Ile de France in 1934 and their friendship lasted until the Nobel Prize-winning author committed suicide in 1961.



Although their ‘love affair’ was never consummated, Hemingway and Dietrich corresponded through a series of at least 30 flirty letters and telegrams over the years

Although their ‘love affair’ was never consummated, they corresponded through a series of at least 30 flirty letters and telegrams over the years.



Those letters were donated by their families to the John F. Kennedy Library and were made public in 2007.

But now another of couple’s correspondences has being put up for auction through Gary Zimet’s Moments in Time with an opening bid of $54,000, reports the New York Post.

The letter reveals an unguarded Hemingway playfully using language to express deep and intense emotions for Dietrich.

A series of letter exchanged between Ernest Hemingway and Marlene Dietrich feature in the Ernest Hemingway Collection room at the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library in Boston

The letter starts with Hemingway writing about an imagined theater project for the Hollywood star - after, it seems, she had asked him to collaborate on one in a previous letter.



‘It would probably have something novel like having you shot onto the stage, drunk, from a self-propelled minnenwerfer [sic] which would advance in from the street rolling over the customers,’ wrote Hemingway.



‘As you landed on the stage drunk and naked, I would advance from the rear, or your rear, wearing evening clothes and would hurriedly strip... to cover you revealing the physique of Burt Lancaster.’



Hemingway imagines her onstage, ‘foaming at the mouth,’ while they ‘break into the Abortion Scene from [the French opera] “Lakmé”’ and he brings a ‘giant rubber whale’ called ‘Captain Ahab’ into the mix.



Then, ‘we bottle the foam and sell it to any surviving customers.’

The letter reveals an unguarded Hemingway playfully using language to express deep and intense emotions for Dietrich

In a serious shift, Hemingway writes, ‘Marlene, darling, I write stories but I have no grace for f****** them up for other mediums,’ and, ‘I love you very much and I never wanted to get mixed in any business with you… neither of us has enough whore blood for that.’ He signs the letter, ‘Papa.’



Hemingway once remarked to his friend and future biographer A.E. Hotchner, that he and Dietrich were ‘Victims of un-synchronized passion.’ Whenever one party was unattached, the other was not.



The lack of physical consummation may have contributed to the often-heated sentiments Hemingway expressed.



'What do you really want to do for a life work?' he wrote on June 19, 1950. 'Break everybody's heart for a dime? You could always break mine for a nickel and I'd bring the nickel.'



Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.



Marlene Dietrich began her career in Berlin in the 1920s acting on stage and in silent films, such as The Blue Angel, above left, before moving to Hollywood and by the 1950s, right, she was a successful show performer



Many of his works, such as For Whom The Bell Tolls, are considered classics of American literature. He committed suicide in the summer of 1961.



Dietrich remained popular throughout her long career by continually re-inventing herself, she began her career in Berlin in the 1920s acting on stage and in silent films, before moving to Hollywood and appearing the films such as Shanghai Express and Desire.

