Ivannow Wladislaus von Dziarski-Orloff
Ivannow Wladislaus von Dziarski-Orloff (born August 19, 1865 in Hungary ; † 1904 ) was a sideshow actor. He performed under the stage name Count Ivan Orloff and was marketed as an ossified and transparent person.
Life
While many of Orloff's biographies, mostly published online, unanimously claim that he was born in Hungary in 1864, his contemporary Hermann Waldemar Otto, alias Signor Saltarino, names the date August 19, 1865 and adds: “Since [...] still relatives of the Mr. Orloff live and hold high positions, so out of consideration for this, both the naming of his place of birth and further details about his family circumstances must be omitted. "The family was very rich, but lost their assets and moved to Germany and later moved to America.
Both Signor Saltarino and other biographers agree that Orloff initially developed normally as a child and from the age of 14 clearly suffered from an illness that consisted of atrophy of his muscles and bone loss in the lower extremities.
As a result, the young man lost the ability to stand and walk within a few years. His limbs, especially his legs, were badly deformed. Whether his upper body ossified at the same time, as was often claimed by Signor Saltarino, is controversial. Orloff also apparently had particularly thin and translucent skin. According to Signor Saltarino, his condition caused him "no pain". This biographer also attested Orloff - apart from the symptoms that made him his “attraction” - in the best of health and reported a few years before his death that the sideshow performer, who spoke several foreign languages and had a very good schooling, “endured his life” Mishap with resignation and great patience ”. Here, however, the printed representation from 1900 contradicts most other sources in which it is reported that Orloff suffered from constant pain and tried to combat it by smoking opium .
The "transparent man" toured parts of Europe and America; At times he owned his own sideshow company called Count Orloff's International Agency .
To say that you could have read a newspaper through your body is an exaggeration, but it was apparently possible, because of his thin skin and regressed muscles, to see the blood running in his veins and to see the glow of light through his limbs .
Signor Saltarino's description of the phenomenon from 1900 ends with the information: “He is now 35 years old, weighs about forty-three English. Pound and is recognized both by the entire press and by the greatest medical authorities as the only transparent and ossified person who has ever existed. "
Individual evidence
- ↑ Biographies can be found at www.thehumanmarvels.com , www.sideshowworld.com and in: Vikas Kathri, True Stories of 81 Weird Humans , Pustak Mahal 2011, ISBN 978-8122312706 ( online version ).
- ↑ Signor Saltarino, abnormalities , Dusseldorf 1900, p 44
- ↑ a b c biography on www.thehumanmarvels.com
- ↑ a b c Signor Saltarino, Abnormitäten , Düsseldorf 1900, p. 45
- ^ Nadja Durbach, Spectacle of Deformity. Freak Shows and Modern British Culture , University of California Press 2009, ISBN 978-0520257689 , p. 11
- ^ Robert Bogdan, Freak Show. Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit , The University of Chicago Press 1988, ISBN 978-0-226-06312-6 , p. 298, note 27
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Dziarski-Orloff, Ivannow Wladislaus von |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Count Orloff; Count Ivan Orloff; Count I. Orloff |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Sideshow actor, "transparent" man |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 19, 1865 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Hungary |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1904 |