Count of Saint Germain

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Count of Saint Germain

The Count of Saint Germain [ sɛ̃ʒɛʀˈmɛ̃ ], (also: Count of Aymar ; Count of Bellamare or Belmar; Count Soltikoff; Count Welldone and others), (* approx. 1710; † February 27, 1784 in Eckernförde ) was an adventurer, impostor , Alchemist , occultist and composer . There are numerous legends surrounding him, some of which were created by himself.

Life

The first reliable report from a Count of Saint Germain comes from Walpole's letters in 1745. According to these, he had already been in London for two years, owned a select collection of jewels, composed and performed as an excellent violinist. He also had a collection of Italian songs and violin sonatas printed in London. In the context of the general suspicion and hostilities against Catholic foreigners because of the Jacobite revolt in Scotland at the time, Saint Germain was temporarily arrested; eventually he aroused the curiosity of the Prince of Wales and became friends with Philip Stanhope .

In Vienna he met the French war minister, Marshal von Belle-Isle (1684–1761), whom he so impressed with plans to invade England that he invited him to Paris. The time there from 1756 to 1760 is considered the high point of Saint Germain's career. In his memoir " Histoire de ma vie " , Casanova vividly describes how the count entertained evening parties by pretending to have been a witness to important, far-distant historical events, which he described in great detail and showed very good historical knowledge. Saint Germain always put on a dead serious expression and neither ate nor drank. He even entertained the Pompadour (1721–1764) in this way, as her chambermaid du Hausset reports. Always on the lookout for new possibilities, King Louis XV. Saint Germain introduced them to him - with complete success: the king had an alchemy laboratory set up in the Trianon Castle in Versailles , and in 1758 he also made rooms available to Saint Germain in the Loire Castle Chambord , where he worked on new methods, among other things textile dyeing experimented. Saint Germain claimed to be able to remove imperfections in gemstones and fuse diamonds into larger ones. He also delivered samples to the king, but was careful not to use trickery in this case. In addition, he categorically refused to give the king any drugs. Apparently, Saint Germain was also versed in pharmacy and claimed to own an aqua benedetta that stopped aging in women. This contributed a lot to the popularity of the count, but he made no business of it during his time in Paris.

The close relationship with the king ultimately also led to his overthrow in Paris. Louis XV used to bypass his Foreign Minister Choiseul and without his knowledge, develop diplomatic activities (called "Secret du Roi"); In particular, in 1760 he was tired of the alliance with the Austrians, which was mainly engineered by Choiseul, in the Seven Years' War , which had developed into a global conflict with England. Saint Germain was used to pretend about a possible peace agreement in The Hague. When the French ambassador Louis Augustin d'Affry learned of Saint Germain's activities and reported them to his minister Choiseul, the latter immediately ordered the arrest of Saint Germain. Since the King pretended to be ignorant, Saint Germain was forced to flee to London.

Saint Germain avoided France for a while and stayed mainly in the Netherlands and Germany, where he liked to use the code name Welldone. According to Grigory Grigoryevich Orlov, Saint Germain is said to have played a role in the putsch of Catherine II in St. Petersburg in 1762 , but details are not known. In 1763 Saint Germain bought an estate near Nijmegen and set up a laboratory, whereby he was able to win over the wealthy Brussels businesswoman Nettine and the governor of the Emperor Count Philipp von Cobenzl to found factories, so that they advanced large sums of money. The tests of the color and textile samples by the skeptical Imperial Minister Kaunitz in Vienna were negative. In August, Saint Germain disappeared from the Netherlands, leaving behind considerable debts.

There are few sources available for the next ten years; Saint Germain appears to have been in Russia and Italy. In 1774 he stayed at the court of Margrave Karl Alexander von Brandenburg-Ansbach / Brandenburg-Bayreuth , with whom he experimented with dyes in his Triesdorf Palace and whom he also presented to Grigori Orlow in nearby Nuremberg, who referred to him as his friend and his greater one Sums of money handed over. Saint Germain played an important role in various Freemason circles, which at the time enabled access to the most influential circles in the German Empire, and thus created a new legend: For example, Cagliostro was very keen to be considered his student. In addition, Saint Germain was allegedly also a Rosicrucian and represented an occult variant of Freemasonry, which made it controversial among Freemasons: the Duke of Braunschweig had it checked in 1777 and found that, contrary to his statements, he was not initiated into the higher degrees . In 1778, Saint Germain in Hamburg and the nearby Altona succeeded in winning the friendship of Karl von Hessen-Kassel , the governor of the Danish king in Schleswig , who was enthusiastic about alchemy and Masonic myths. At his summer palace in Louisenlund , he set up an alchemist's laboratory for the count (the “Alchemist Tower” has now been demolished), and they both founded a silk dyeing factory in nearby Eckernförde. However, Saint Germain didn't get the climate. Finally, according to the church book entry, he died on February 27, 1784 in Eckernförde. Saint Germain was buried in St. Nicolai - his tombstone fell victim to a storm surge .

origin

The origin of the Count of Saint Germain and the sources of his wealth are puzzling. Here are the most important hypotheses:

  • At that time he himself stated to the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel in Germany that he was the son of the Transylvanian Prince Franz II. Rákóczi (1676–1735), but could not prove this. This is also partly asserted in the occult and Masonic literature. The two sons of Rákóczi, who led the Kuruc uprisings against Austria in Hungary , but later lived in exile in Paris and from 1717 in Turkey, were raised as a kind of hostages at the Viennese court. According to this hypothesis of origin, another son, Leopold Georg, nee 1696, officially died in 1700, but was secretly brought up by the last Medici Duke Gian Gastone de 'Medici of Tuscany (Saint Germain had also said this to the Landgrave). The question then arises, however, why Rákóczi did not recognize him or why Saint Germain could not prove his parentage. Jean Overton-Fuller also supports the thesis of a connection to Rakoczy. According to her, Saint Germain was an illegitimate son of Rakoczy, who stayed in Florence for four months in 1693 on his cavalier tour of Italy, and Violante Beatrix of Bavaria , the wife of Ferdinando de Medici , the brother of Gian Gastone (the marriage was probably childless because Ferdinando de Medici was sterile). Then Saint Germain would have been raised at the court of Gian Gastone in Florence.
  • A more likely hypothesis assumes that he was the son of the last Spanish Habsburg queen Maria Anna von Pfalz-Neuburg (1667–1740) and a Jewish banker in Madrid, Comte Adanero, whom she made her finance minister. After King Charles II died childless in 1700, which led to the War of the Spanish Succession and helped the Bourbons to the Spanish throne, she lived in exile in Bayonne in the French Basque Country. The French Foreign Minister Duke von Choiseul also hinted in this direction when he was confronted with the question of why the French state knew nothing about him: “He was the son of a Portuguese Jew who deceived the court.” Baron Carl Heinrich von Gleichen (1733-1807), Danish envoy in Paris, reports in his memoir that Baron Philipp von Stosch (a well-known German art collector in Florence, at times double agent of the English with the Jacobites in Rome) told him in Florence that he had at the time of the regent Philippe II. de Bourbon, duc d'Orléans , ie 1715–1723, knew a Marquis of Montferrat in Paris , son of the widow of Charles II and a banker from Madrid. Saint Germain also later used this code name in Italy. Growing up in Italy would also be compatible with the Palatinate-Neuburg hypothesis, because the sister of the last Medici Grand Duke of Tuscany, Gian Gastone de 'Medici, was married to the Palatinate Elector Johann Wilhelm , the brother of Queen Maria Anna. The Saint-Germain researcher Charconac also advocates the Pfalz-Neuburg variant and states that the father was Jean Thomas Enriquez de Cabrera, Duke of Rioseco, eleventh and last amirante of Castile, with extensive property in Sicily.
  • According to the memoirs of the Marquise de Crequi, he was an Alsatian Jew named Simon Wolff.
  • After Casanova he was an Italian violin player named Catalani. The judgment of the Venetian, who himself played the violin for a while in an orchestra, weighs heavily: Saint Germain must certainly have grown up in Italy for a long time in his younger years.
  • The minister of the Margrave of Baden, von Gemmingen, claims to have found out in Italy that he was the son of a tax collector from San Germano in Piedmont named Rotondo and was born around 1710.
  • To the sister of Frederick the Great, Princess Amalie of Prussia , he stated that he came from a country in Europe that had never been occupied by foreign powers and that had a royal line as long as the Bourbons. According to Overton-Fuller, only Bavaria and the Wittelsbachers come into question, for them further support for their above-mentioned ancestry thesis.

Saint Germain was multilingual - he spoke perfect Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, French (with a Piedmont accent), English, and read some dead languages. Geographically, this points to both the Iberian Peninsula and the Italian Piedmont . The first message about his appearance in London also mentions that he spoke Polish, which is rather unusual.

Nothing is known about his date of birth. At the time of his appearance in Paris (around 1756) Madame du Hausset estimated him to be around 50. According to Hartmut Verfürden, he was born between 1710 and 1715, citing a Brussels newspaper report from 1760, in which he was born in 1712 and was born in Italy the speech is.

Trivia and additions

The only surviving picture of Saint Germain comes from the estate of the Marquise d'Urfé (afterwards the engraving by N. Thomas shown above). The painting itself has not survived. It shows St. Germain around 1760. Casanova and Saint Germain competed with each other in Paris. Both wanted to influence the rich widow (Madame d'Urfé), Casanova because of her money, which he openly admitted. The motives of Saint Germain, however, remained a mystery to Casanova, since he was apparently not interested in her money.

Voltaire's remark in a letter to Frederick the Great on April 15, 1760 that Saint Germain was "a man who never dies and knows everything" is meant ironically. At this time, Saint Germain irritated Frederick the Great with his appearance in London , whose own negotiator was arrested by the French Foreign Minister Choiseul in order to “calm down the Austrians” who were concerned about a possible separate peace between the French in the Seven Years' War. In a reply to Voltaire, Friedrich then called him a "Count to laugh" (Comte pour rire). In March 1777, Saint Germain turned again to Frederick the Great via the envoy in Dresden, Count Alvensleben, to offer his services, including a list of his chemical and technological skills (printed by Volz). Friedrich's opinion of Saint Germain was significantly more positive at this time.

The legend of the non-aging of Saint Germain was so strong that many memoir writers claim to have seen him well into the 19th century (Comtesse de Genlis Memoirs 1825 et al.). Apparently there was also a tendency to amalgamate his legend with that of the " Eternal Jew ".

The souvenirs de Marie Antoinette of the Comtesse d'Adhemar, in which it is claimed that Saint Germain warned Marie Antoinette of a bloody revolution by the “encyclopedists”, are a forgery and come not from the Queen's confidante, but from a certain Lamothe- Langon. The legend comes from here that Saint Germain also foretold the future.

The doctor Franz Anton Mesmer , who formulated the theory of animal magnetism (bio-energy), is said to have been a student of the count.

The spiritualist and founder of "Theosophy" Madame Blavatsky considered Saint Germain to be one of the "secret Tibetan sages". Her American student Isabel Cooper-Oakley tried to substantiate this and conducted intensive archive studies, which she published in her book. The legend comes from here that Saint Germain traveled as far as Persia and India and studied the books of wisdom of the East in the original Sanskrit.
The Theosophical Society Adyar calls Saint Germain "Master Racoczi", claims him to be the "Master of the 7th Ray" and claims that he is the incarnation of Francis and Roger Bacon .

Rudolf Steiner , the founder of anthroposophy, proclaimed that he clairvoyantly came to the conclusion that Christian Rosencreutz - actually a literary fictional character - was the Count of Saint Germain in the 18th century and is also reincarnated today.

Napoleon III had an extensive dossier compiled on Saint Germain, which fell victim to the flames in the prefecture during the time of the Paris Commune .

According to von Gleichen, Saint Germain is also said to have been a good painter. There was a (real?) Holy Family of Bartolomé Esteban Murillo in Saint Germain's painting collection . Saint Germain attracted attention with its novel color mixing techniques, which painters like Maurice Quentin de La Tour and Charles André van Loo admired.

One of the numerous chemical discoveries that he wanted to market was a gold-like metal (he called it similor, i.e. simil or - similar to gold), also known as Carlsgold or new platinum. However, according to reports from contemporaries, its shine did not seem to have lasted, and the objects cast from it even turned black. The Landgrave of Hessen-Kassel had medals cast from this material in Ludwigsburg (Schleswig-Holstein).

Saint Germain liked to propagate a tea made from senna leaves, which were imported from Ethiopia / Arabia and have a laxative effect. The tea was still known as "Saint-Germain tea" in Germany and Denmark in the 19th century.

According to older editions of “Groves Dictionary of Music” (3rd edition 1938), the one who published music under the name of St. Germain in London around 1745 is the Italian composer and violinist Giovannini, known as the author of “Willst du dein Give a heart to me ”in Anna Magdalena Bach's music book . He lived in Berlin since 1740 and died in 1782. This seems to be due to a mix-up that was first made in an artist lexicon by Gerber in 1812. In London, Saint Germain contributed, among other things, some arias for the moderately successful opera L'incostanza delusa by the Italian opera composer Brivio (arranged by Francesco Geminiani ), which was performed on Saturdays from February 9 to April 20, 1745 at the Haymarket Theater . He also studied some songs with the singer Giulia Frasi . Saint Germain also sang himself at a few private concerts. Lady Jemima Gray was not very pleased with his style, which expresses emotions very vividly, and his weak voice: "His manner is beyond any description".

Saint Germain is often confused with his contemporaries, such as the French general and minister Claude Louis de Saint-Germain or Robert François Quesnay de Saint-Germain . There was also a French commander, Renault de Saint-Germain, who lost the Chandernagore French branch in India to Clive in 1757 .

In occult circles, Saint Germain is considered to be the author of the Manuscript of the Most Sacred Trinosophy , which is an initiatory, alchemical revelation with explanatory occult symbols. The I-am movement founded in 1930 by the Californian Guy W. Ballard (1878–1939) revered him as a spiritual leader.

Quotes

Casanova, memoir:

“He presented himself as a boy wonder in every way. He wanted to amaze and actually amaze you. He had a determined way of speaking, but it was not displeasing, because he was learned, spoke all languages ​​fluently, was very musical, a great connoisseur of chemistry, had pleasant traits and knew how to make himself popular with all women. "

The Prussian ambassador in Dresden, Count Alvensleben 1777:

“He is a highly gifted man with a wide-awake mind, but without any judgment. He has earned his unique reputation only through the most humiliating and mean flattery a person is capable of, and through his extraordinary eloquence with which he can articulate himself, especially when one lets himself be carried away by the zeal and enthusiasm. The mainspring of his actions is his bottomless vanity. He is stimulating and entertaining in company as long as he is just talking. But as soon as he tries to develop his own thoughts, all his weakness comes to the fore ... But woe to those who contradict him. "

literature

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Most of the original documents on Saint Germain are reproduced in the book by Volz.

  • Madame du Hausset (Nicole du Hausset): Memoirs , Paris 1824 (Pompadour's maid), English edition
  • Karl Heinrich von Gleichen : Souvenirs , Leipzig 1847, Paris 1868 (the Danish ambassador in Paris was friends with Saint Germain), online
  • Alfred von Arneth : Count Philipp Cobenzl and his memoirs . Gerold, Vienna 1885 (Saint Germain set up a cloth dyeing factory for the imperial governor in the Habsburg Netherlands, but fell out with him), online
  • Karl von Hessen-Kassel: Memoires de mon temps , Copenhagen 1861, online
  • Maximilian Joseph von Lamberg : Diary of a man of the world , Frankfurt am Main 1775 (French original Memorial d´un mondain , 1774, in the London 1776 edition, Volume 1: Archives )
  • Pierre-Jean Grosley : Memoirs in: Œuvre inedits Vol. 3, 1813 (Grosley is best known as a travel writer)
  • Casanova: Memoirs , Propylaea edition
  • Casanova: Soliloque d un penseur, Correspondance inedit 1773-1783 , Paris 1926, Jean Fort (ed.), 148 pages

Non-fiction

Standard works are:

  • Paul Chacornac: Le Comte de Saint Germain , Editions Traditionnelles, Paris 1989 (repr. Of the Paris 1947 edition, Chacornac Frères)
  • Jean Overton Fuller : The Comte de Saint-Germain , London 1988
  • Jean Overton Fuller: Saint Germain, Le Comte de , in: Wouter Hanegraaff (Ed.), Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, Brill 2006
  • Gustav Berthold Volz (ed.): The Count of Saint Germain - the life of an alchemist according to largely unpublished documents , Dresden, Paul Aretz Verlag 1923, 1925

Further literature:

  • Pierre Andremont: Les trois vies du comte de Saint-Germain , Geneva 1980
  • Roman Belousov: Graf Sen-Zhermen , Moscow, Olimp 1999 (Russian)
  • Heinrich Benedikt : The secrets of the Count of Saint-Germain , in Benedikt: When Belgium was Austrian , Verlag Herold, Vienna 1965, pp. 131–143 (with reproduction of parts of the correspondence between Kaunitz and Cobenzl)
  • Una Birch : Secret societies and the French revolution , London 1911, Archives
  • Friedrich Bülau : Secret stories and mysterious people . Reclam, Leipzig 1892 ff
  • Eliza Marian Butler: The myth of the magus , Cambridge UP 1948, 1993, Chapter 2: The man of mystery
  • Rives Childs: Casanova , Blanvalet 1977, reprint Büchergilde Gutenberg 1978, p. 100ff
  • Isabel Cooper-Oakley: The Comte de Saint Germain. The secret kings . The Theosophical Publishing House, London 1985, ISBN 07229-5146-9 (repr. Of the Milan 1930 edition) (reprint of many documents, but in some cases unreliable sources)
  • Neil Cornwell: You've heard of the Count Saint-Germain ... "—in Pushkin's" The Queen of Spades "and Far Beyond, New Zealand Slavonic Journal, Festschrift in honor of Arnold McMillin, 2002, pp. 49-66
  • Christiane Feuerstack: Count Saint Germain. In the mirror of contradictions . Borbyer Werkstatt Verlag, Eckernförde 2004, ISBN 3-924964-22-X
  • Thomas Freller: Magician, Forger, Adventurer, Cagliostro, Vella, St. Germain , Artemis Winkler 2006
    • The section on Saint Germain also appeared as: The Count of Saint-Germain, Alchemist or Impostor? , Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 2015
  • Manly P. Hall: The most holy trinosophia of the Comte de St. Germain . The Philosophical Research Society, Los Angeles, Calif. 1962 (with commentary and biography) (attribution of this book to Saint-Germain uncertain)
  • Maurice Heim: Le vrai visage du Comte de Saint Germain . Gallimard, Paris 1957
  • Willers Jessen: Der Graf Saint-Germain 1907, reprint yearbook Heimatgemeinschaft Eckernförde booklet 5, Eckernförde 2004
  • Andrew Lang : Historical mysteries , 1904, chapter Saint Germain the deathless , online
  • LA Langeveld: The Count of Saint Germain. The adventurous prince educator of the 18th century . Starczewski, Höhr-Grenzhausen 1993, ISBN 3-925612-22-X (repr. Of the Berlin 1930 edition) (unreliable sources)
  • Pierre Lhermier: Le mysterieux comte de Saint Germain , Paris, Colbert edition, 1943
  • Marie Antoinette von Lowzow: Saint Germain - Den mystiske greve , Dansk Historisk Håndbogsforlag, Copenhagen, 1981.
  • Charles Mackay: Extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds , London 1841, reprinted several times, online in Vol. 3
  • Mieke Mosmuller , Thomas Senne, Jos Mosmuller: The Count of Saint Germain and Music , Occident Verlag 2018, ISBN 978-3-946699-07-1 .
  • Jean Moura, Paul Louvet: Saint Germain, le Rose-Croix immortel . Editions J'ai Lu, Paris 1973 (repr. Of the Paris 1934 edition)
  • Raphael Patai: The Jewish Alchemists: A History and Source Book , Princeton University Press 1994 (Chapter 37, pp. 463–479)
  • B. Röse, Germain (-Saint), in Verlag, Gruber (Hrsg.), General Encyclopedia of Sciences and Arts , Leipzig, Brockhaus 1855, digitized, SUB Göttingen
  • Irene Tetzlaff: Under the wings of the phoenix. The Count of Saint Germain; Statements, opinions, traditions . Mellinger Verlag, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-88069-289-0 . (partly unreliable sources)
  • Franz Wegener: The Masonic Garden. The Secret Gardens of the Freemasons of the 18th Century , Gladbeck 2008, ISBN 978-3-931300-22-7 .
  • Colin Wilson: Das Occkulte , March Verlag 1982, reprint Fourier 1995 (English original 1971), p. 449ff

Essays:

  • Rainer Beuthel: Saint-Germain and the occult , in: Who was "Count Saint-Germain"? A historical-critical inventory , yearbook of the home community Eckernförde: supplements "materials and research from the region"; 5, Eckernförde 2004
  • Hartmut Verfürden: The Count of St. Germain - Sketches of a Way of Life , in: Landgraf Carl von Hessen, lectures for an exhibition, ed. from Schleswig-Holstein State Archives, Schleswig 1997, page 139ff
  • Hartmut Verfürden: The Count of Saint-Germain and Eckernförde , in: Who was “Count Saint-Germain”: a historical-critical inventory , yearbook of the Heimatgemeinschaft Eckernförde eV: supplements “Materials and Research from the Region”; 5, Eckernförde 2004
  • Hartmut Verfürden: "He also reprimanded Leibnitzen." The Count of Saint-Germain in press reports from the year he died in 1784 , in: Yearbook of the home community Eckernförde, 70th year, 2012, pages 31 to 41

Fiction

  • Eduard Maria Oettinger : The Count of Saint-Germain , Reclam 1846
  • Karl May : Aqua benedetta . In: Happy Hours , 1877, online
  • Karl May: A prince of fraud . In: Deutscher Hausschatz , 1880, online (revised and expanded version of Aqua benedetta )
  • Irene Tetzlaff: The Count of Saint Germain. Light of darkness . Mellinger, Stuttgart 1980, ISBN 3-88069-020-0
  • Peter Krassa: The revenant. The timeless life of Count St. Germain . Herbig, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-7766-2062-5
  • Alexandre Dumas : The Collar Affair (Cagliostro, who predicts a bleak future for Dubarry, has clear characteristics of Saint-Germain)
  • Chelsea Quinn Yarbro : Hotel Transylvania . Festa, Almersbach 2003, ISBN 3-935822-57-X ; Palast der Vampire , Festa Verlag, Leipzig 2005, ISBN 3-86552-012-X (The Count of Saint-Germain appears in both novels as the main character as a vampire count; reference is made to his musical, historical and alchemical knowledge; these are similar almost exactly the descriptions of the historical Count of Saint-Germain. Some background information can be found at the end of the book Hotel Transylvania )

As a minor character, Saint-Germain appears in the following books, among others:

Movies

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Letter to Horace Mann dated December 9, 1745, quoted by Andrew Lang: Historical mysteries .
  2. ↑ Jean Overton-Fuller refers, however, to an even older letter from the Count of The Hague to Hans Sloane from 1735, in which he offers him an incunable. Article Saint Germain in Wouter Hanegraaff (ed.), Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, Brill 2006
  3. ↑ Saint Germain himself commented on equals as follows: “These Parisian idiots (ces bêtes de parisiens) believe that I am 500 years old, and I confirm this view, since I see that they give them pleasure - which they don't should mean that I am not much older than I appear ” . Soon some very popular imitators appeared, like a certain "Milord Gowers", who expanded his legend.
  4. ↑ cf. Janusz Piekalkiewicz Weltgeschichte der Espionage , Weltbild Verlag 1988, p. 168ff, where he goes into detail about the agents of the Secret du Roi (Casanova, d'Eon ), but overlooked Saint Germain.
  5. ↑ Corresponding claims can be found in many older encyclopedias, but also, for example, in the 2001 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (CD edition). This is also asserted in Langeveld's and Lhermier's books, and St. Germain is identified with a certain Odard who, after describing the putsch by de Rulhiere, played an important role on behalf of the French. De Rulhiere also reports, however, that he retired in Nice and died there of a heart attack ( Coup de Tonnere ), de Rulhiere: Histoire d'Anarchie de Pologne (reprint of his Anecdotes Sur la Revolution de Russie , dated 1773 bear, in the appendix), Vol. 4, 1807, p. 402.
  6. ↑ Grigori Orlow called him to the Margrave of Ansbach: A man who played a major role in our revolution ( Voilà un homme qui a joué un grand rôle dans notre revolution , Bülau Personnages enigmatiques , Paris, 1861, vol. 1, p . 344, the corresponding passages are also printed in Volz). Friendly relations between St. Germain and the Orlows are documented several times, for example when Saint Germain visited the Russian fleet commanded by Alexei Grigoryevich Orlov in Livorno in 1770, where Saint Germain Count Saltikoff called himself. Hardenbroek's memoirs, published by Volz, show that St. Germain was in Holland from March to August 1762. The coup was at the end of June. St. Germain, however, had contacts with the people around Catherine II, he frequented Paris in the house of the mother of the future Tsarina. According to Chacornac ( Le Comte de Saint Germain , 1947, p. 116f), who, despite an intensive search, could not find any evidence of participation in the coup, Saint Germain was in St. Petersburg for several months earlier in 1762, where he met his friend, visited the Italian court painter Pietro Rotari .
  7. ↑ corresponding letters in Volz, p. 324ff.
  8. ↑ This is confirmed by Casanova in his memoir. Casanova describes their last meeting in Tournai, where he set up a dye works with the support of Count Cobenzl in 1763. Saint-Germain tried to impress the skeptical "colleague" Casanova with alchemical sleight of hand. Casanova then states that at the time his memoirs were written (around 1790), Saint-Germain had been dead for seven to eight years and died in Schleswig - which he wrote incorrectly.
  9. ↑ That was also a reason why the ways of Saint Germain and the Margrave of Ansbach parted, because he made inquiries and doubted the descent of Rákóczi (Colin Wilson p. 453).
  10. ↑ According to the Landgrave, he also stated that he was the son of Rakoczy with a Thököly from his second marriage. Rakoczy was only married once and the Thököly line was already extinct at that time. Rakoczy's mother married a Thököly for the second time, so this could have been a misunderstanding on the part of the landgrave.
  11. ^ Overton-Fuller, Article Saint Germain, in Wouter Hanegraaff (ed.), Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, Brill 2006
  12. ↑ Grosley, Memoirs , he claims to have heard this in Holland.
  13. ↑ von Gleichen, Memoirs .
  14. ↑ Memoirs of her chambermaid du Hausset.
  15. ↑ Soliloque d un penseur , Prague 1784, according to footnote in Propylaea edition of Casanova's memoirs, vol. 5, p. 326. In his book he goes on a single page about Saint Germain and once again shows his admiration (Rives Childs, “ Casanova " , p. 101).
  16. ↑ Volz Saint Germain
  17. ^ Overton Fuller, Article Saint Germain, in Wouter Hanegraaff (ed.), Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, Brill 2006.
  18. ↑ Podcast by Hartmut Verfürden, Hoaxilla, 2012, see web links. He refers to a report from the French ambassador dated December 21, 1745, in which his language skills are also listed, incompletely printed by Overton-Fuller. In Walpole's letter it is said that in London he was either considered a Spaniard, Italian or Polish.
  19. Jump up ↑ Verfürden, The Count of Saint Germain. Sketches of a Path of Life, p. 158
  20. ↑ Voltaire, Werke , Beugnot ed., Vol. 58, Letters No. 2892, 2996. Or Voltaire, Œuvres, Volume 51, Paris 1824, p. 432, letter from the king of May 1, 1760 from Meissen, digitized
  21. ^ Patai, Jewish Alchemists, p. 463, he quotes Lhermier
  22. ↑ Horst E. Miers: Lexicon of secret knowledge. (= Esoteric. Vol. 12179). Goldmann, Munich 1993, p. 541.
  23. ↑ Harald Lamprecht : New Rosicrucians. A manual. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2004. p. 195.
  24. ↑ For example Franz Gräffer, Kleine Wiener Memoiren, Teil 5, Vienna 1846, p. 222, Saint Germain Thee and his author , digitized
  25. ↑ John Hendrik Calmeyer The Count of Saint Germain and Giovannini - a case of mistaken identity , Music and letters Vol. 48, 1967, p. 4 and in New Grove's Dictionary of Music and Thesis University North Carolina 1964. On Saint-Germain and his Music see also Johan Franco The Count of Saint Germain , The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 36, 1950, p. 540
  26. ↑ Julia Jüttner: Sprüngli widow Alexandra Gantenbein dead in the bathtub SPIEGEL ONLINE
  27. ^ Propylaea edition, vol. 5, p. 143
  28. ^ Letter to Frederick the Great on June 25, 1777, quoted in Colin Wilson, p. 454. Compared to the original in Volz, p. 310, somewhat condensed.
  29. ↑ The authenticity of the memoirs (the original does not exist and the chambermaid died in 1801) is questioned. See Duc René de Castries, La Pompadour, Albin Michel 1983, p. 122
personal data
SURNAME Count of Saint Germain
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Aymar de Betmar; Marquis de Betmar; Count Welldone
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German alchemist and occultist
DATE OF BIRTH 17th century or 18th century
DATE OF DEATH February 27, 1784
Place of death Eckernförde