Count of St. Germain

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"Count Saint-Germain" redirects here. Also see St. Germain (Theosophy). For other uses of St. Germain see Saint-Germain (disambiguation).
An engraving of the Count of St. Germain by Nicolas Thomas made in 1783, after a painting then owned by the Marquise d'Urfe and now lost[1]Contained at the Louvre in France[2]
The Comte de Saint Germain (French pronunciation: ​[kɔ̃t də sɛ̃ ʒɛʁmɛ̃]; born circa 1691 or 1712 – died 27 February 1784)[3] was a European adventurer, with an interest in science and the arts. He achieved prominence in European high society of the mid-1700s. Prince Charles of Hesse-Kassel considered him to be "one of the greatest philosophers who ever lived".[4] St. Germain used a variety of names and titles, an accepted practice amongst royalty and nobility at the time. These include the Marquis de Montferrat, Comte Bellamarre, Chevalier Schoening, Count Weldon, Comte Soltikoff, Graf Tzarogy, and Prinz Ragoczy.[5] In order to deflect inquiries as to his origins, he would invent fantasies, such as his being 500 years old,[6] leading Voltaire to sarcastically dub him "The Wonderman".[7]
His birth and background are obscure, but towards the end of his life, he claimed that he was a son of Prince Francis II Rákóczi of Transylvania. His name has occasionally caused him to be confused with Claude Louis, Comte de Saint-Germain, a noted French general, and Robert-François Quesnay de Saint Germain, an active occultist.[8]

Background[edit]

The count claimed to be a son of Francis II Rákóczi, the Prince of Transylvania, which could possibly be unfounded.[9] However, this would account for his wealth and fine education.[10] The will of Francis II Rákóczi mentions his eldest son, Leopold George, who was believed to have died at the age of four.[10] The speculation is that his identity was safeguarded as a protective measure from the persecutions against the Habsburg dynasty.[10] At the time of his arrival in Schleswig in 1779, St. Germain told Prince Charles of Hesse-Kassel that he was 88 years old.[11] This would place his birth in 1691, when Francis II Rákóczi was 15 years old.
St. Germain was supposedly educated in Italy by the last of Medicis, Gian Gastone, his alleged mother's brother-in-law. He was believed to be a student at the University of Siena.[8] Throughout his adult life, he deliberately spun a confusing web to conceal his actual name and origins, using different pseudonyms in the different places of Europe that he visited.
The Marquis de Crequy declared that St. Germain was an Alsatian Jew, Simon Wolff by name, and was born at Strasbourg about the close of the 17th or the beginning of the 18th century; others insist that he was a Spanish Jesuit named Aymar; and others again intimate that his true title was the Marquis de Betmar, and that he was a native of Portugal. The most plausible theory, however, makes him the natural son of an Italian princess and fixes his birth at San Germano, in Savoy, about the year 1710; his ostensible father being one Rotondo, a tax-collector of that district.
— Phineas Taylor Barnum, The Humbugs of the World, 1886.

Historical figure[edit]

He appears to have begun to be known under the title of the Count of St Germain during the early 1740s.[12]

England[edit]

According to David Hunter, the count contributed some of the songs to L'incostanza delusa, an opera performed at the Haymarket Theatre in London on all but one of the Saturdays from 9 February to 20 April 1745.[8] Later, in a letter of December of that same year, Horace Walpole mentions the Count St. Germain as being arrested in London on suspicion of espionage (this was during the Jacobite rebellion of 1745), but released without charge:
The other day they seized an odd man, who goes by the name of Count St. Germain. He has been here these two years, and will not tell who he is, or whence, but professes [two wonderful things, the first] that he does not go by his right name; and the second that he never had any dealings with any woman – nay, nor with any succedaneum. He sings, plays on the violin wonderfully, composes, is mad, and not very sensible. He is called an Italian, a Spaniard, a Pole; a somebody that married a great fortune in Mexico, and ran away with her jewels to Constantinople; a priest, a fiddler, a vast nobleman. The Prince of Wales has had unsatiated curiosity about him, but in vain. However, nothing has been made out against him; he is released; and, what convinces me that he is not a gentleman, stays here, and talks of his being taken up for a spy.[13]
The Count gave two private musical performances in London in April and May 1749.[8] On one such occasion, Lady Jemima Yorke described how she was 'very much entertain'd by him or at himthe whole Time – I mean the Oddness of his Manner which it is impossible not to laugh at, otherwise you know he is very sensible & well-bred in conversation'.[8] She continued:
'He is an Odd Creature, and the more I see him the more curious I am to know something about him. He is everything with everybody: he talks Ingeniously with Mr Wray, Philosophy with Lord Willoughby, and is gallant with Miss Yorke, Miss Carpenter, and all the Young Ladies. But the Character and Philosopher is what he seems to pretend to, and to be a good deal conceited of: the Others are put on to comply with Les Manieres du Monde, but that you are to suppose his real characteristic; and I can't but fancy he is a great Pretender in All kinds of Science, as well as that he really has acquired an uncommon Share in some'.[8]
Walpole reports that St Germain:
'spoke Italian and French with the greatest facility, though it was evident that neither was his language; he understood Polish, and soon learnt to understand English and talk it a little [...] But Spanish or Portuguese seemed his natural language'.[14]
Walpole concludes that the Count was 'a man of Quality who had been in or designed for the Church. He was too great a musician not to have been famous if he had not been a gentleman'.[14]Walpole describes the Count as pale, with 'extremely black' hair and a beard. 'He dressed magnificently, [and] had several jewels' and was clearly receiving 'large remittances, but made no other figure'.[14]

France[edit]

St. Germain appeared in the French court around 1748. In 1749, he was employed by Louis XV for diplomatic missions.[15]
A mime and English comedian known as Mi'Lord Gower impersonated St. Germain in Paris salons. His stories were wilder than the real count's (he had advised Jesus, for example). Inevitably, hearsay of his routine got confused with the original.
Giacomo Casanova describes in his memoirs several meetings with the "celebrated and learned impostor". Of his first meeting, in Paris in 1757, he writes:
The most enjoyable dinner I had was with Madame de Robert Gergi, who came with the famous adventurer, known by the name of the Count de St. Germain. This individual, instead of eating, talked from the beginning of the meal to the end, and I followed his example in one respect as I did not eat, but listened to him with the greatest attention. It may safely be said that as a conversationalist he was unequalled.
St. Germain gave himself out for a marvel and always aimed at exciting amazement, which he often succeeded in doing. He was scholar, linguist, musician, and chemist, good-looking, and a perfect ladies' man. For a while he gave them paints and cosmetics; he flattered them, not that he would make them young again (which he modestly confessed was beyond him) but that their beauty would be preserved by means of a wash which, he said, cost him a lot of money, but which he gave away freely. He had contrived to gain the favour of Madame de Pompadour, who had spoken about him to the king, for whom he had made a laboratory, in which the monarch — a martyr to boredom — tried to find a little pleasure or distraction, at all events, by making dyes. The king had given him a suite of rooms at Chambord, and a hundred thousand francs for the construction of a laboratory, and according to St. Germain the dyes discovered by the king would have a materially beneficial influence on the quality of French fabrics.
This extraordinary man, intended by nature to be the king of impostors and quacks, would say in an easy, assured manner that he was three hundred years old, that he knew the secret of the Universal Medicine, that he possessed a mastery over nature, that he could melt diamonds, professing himself capable of forming, out of ten or twelve small diamonds, one large one of the finest water without any loss of weight. All this, he said, was a mere trifle to him. Notwithstanding his boastings, his bare-faced lies, and his manifold eccentricities, I cannot say I thought him offensive. In spite of my knowledge of what he was and in spite of my own feelings, I thought him an astonishing man as he was always astonishing me.[16]

Dutch Republic[edit]

In March 1760, at the height of the Seven Years' War, St. Germain travelled to The Hague. In Amsterdam, he stayed at the bankers Adrian and Thomas Hope and pretended he came to borrow money for Louis XV with diamonds as collateral.[17] He assisted Bertrand Philip, Count of Gronsveld starting a porcelain factory in Weesp as furnace and colour specialist.[18] St. Germain tried to open peace negotiations between Britain and France with the help of Duke Louis Ernest of Brunswick-Lüneburg. British diplomats concluded that St. Germain had the backing of the Duc de Belle-Isle and possibly of Madame de Pompadour, who were trying to outmanoeuvre the French Foreign Minister, the pro-Austrian Duc de Choiseul. However, Britain would not treat with St. Germain unless his credentials came directly from the French king. The Duc de Choiseul convinced Louis XV to disavow St. Germain and demand his arrest. Count Bentinck de Rhoon, a Dutch diplomat, regarded the arrest warrant as internal French politicking, in which Holland should not involve itself. However, a direct refusal to extradite St. Germain was also considered impolitic. De Rhoon, therefore, facilitated the departure of St. Germain to England with a passport issued by the British Ambassador, General Joseph Yorke. This passport was made out "in blank", allowing St. Germain to travel in May 1760 from Hellevoetsluis to London under an assumed name, showing that this practice was officially accepted at the time.[19]
From St. Peterburg, St. Germain travelled to Berlin, Vienna, Milan, Ubbergen, and Zutphen (June 1762),[20][21] Amsterdam (August 1762), Venice (1769), Livorno (1770), Neurenberg (1772), Mantua (1773), The Hague (1774), and Bad Schwalbach.

Death[edit]

In 1779, St. Germain arrived in Altona in Schleswig, where he made an acquaintance with Prince Charles of Hesse-Kassel, who also had an interest in mysticism and was a member of several secret societies. The count showed the Prince several of his gems and he convinced the latter that he had invented a new method of colouring cloth. The Prince was impressed and installed the Count in an abandoned factory at Eckernförde he had acquired especially for the Count, and supplied him with the materials and cloths that St. Germain needed to proceed with the project.[22] The two met frequently in the following years, and the Prince outfitted a laboratory for alchemical experiments in his nearby summer residence Louisenlund, where they, among other things, cooperated in creating gemstones and jewelry. The prince later recounts in a letter that he was the only person in whom the count truly confided.[23] He told the prince that he was the son of the Transylvanian Prince Francis II Rákóczi, and that he had been 88 years of age when he arrived in Schleswig.[24]
The count died in his residence in the factory on 27 February 1784, while the prince was staying in Kassel, and the death was recorded in the register of the St. Nicolai Church in Eckernförde.[25]He was buried 2 March and the cost of the burial was listed in the accounting books of the church the following day.[26] The official burial site for the count is at Nicolai Church (German St. Nicolaikirche) in Eckernförde. He was buried in a private grave. On 3 April the same year, the mayor and the city council of Eckernförde issued an official proclamation about the auctioning off of the count's remaining effects in case no living relative would appear within a designated time period to lay claim on them.[27] Prince Charles donated the factory to the crown and it was afterward converted into a hospital.
Jean Fuller-Overton found, during her research, that the count's estate upon his death was a packet of paid and receipted bills and quittances, 82 Reichsthalers and 13 shillings (cash), 29 various groups of items of clothing (this includes gloves, stockings, trousers, shirts, etc.), 14 linen shirts, eight other groups of linen items, and various sundries (razors, buckles, toothbrushes, sunglasses, combs, etc.). No diamonds, jewels, gold, or any other riches were listed, nor were kept cultural items from travels, personal items (like his violin), or any notes of correspondence.[28]

Music by the Count[edit]

The following list of music comes from Appendix II from Jean Overton-Fuller's book The Comte de Saint Germain.[29]
Trio Sonatas
Six sonatas for two violins with a bass for harpsichord or violoncello:
  • Op.47 I. F Major, 4/4, Molto Adagio
  • Op.48 II. B Flat Major, 4/4, Allegro
  • Op.49 III. E Flat Major, 4/4, Adagio
  • Op.50 IV. G Minor, 4/4, Tempo giusto
  • Op.51 V. G Major, 4/4, Moderato
  • Op.52 VI. A Major, 3/4, Cantabile lento
Violin solos
Seven solos for a violin:
  • Op.53 I. B Flat Major, 4/4, Largo
  • Op.54 II. E Major, 4/4, Adagio
  • Op.55 III. C Minor, 4/4, Adagio
  • Op.56 IV. E Flat Major, 4/4, Adagio
  • Op.57 V. E Flat Major, 4/4, Adagio
  • Op.58 VI. A Major, 4/4, Adagio
  • Op.59 VII. B Flat Major, 4/4, Adagio
English songs
  • Op.4 The Maid That's Made For Love and Me (O Wouldst Thou Know What Sacred Charms). E Flat Major (marked B Flat Major), 3/4
  • Op.7 Jove, When He Saw My Fanny's Face. D Major, 3/4
  • Op.5 It Is Not That I Love You Less. F Major, 3/4
  • Op.6 Gentle Love, This Hour Befriend Me. D Major, 4/4
Italian arias
Numbered in order of their appearance in the Musique Raisonnee, with their page numbers in that volume, * Marks those performed in L'Incostanza Delusa and published in the Favourite Songs[30]from that opera.
  • Op.8 I. Padre perdona, oh! pene, G Minor, 4/4, p. 1
  • Op.9 II. Non piangete amarti, E Major, 4/4, p. 6
  • Op.10 III. Intendo il tuo, F Major, 4/4, p. 11
  • Op.1 IV. Senza pieta mi credi*, G Major, 6/8 (marked 3/8 but there are 6 quavers to the bar), p. 16
  • Op.11 V. Gia, gia che moria deggio, D Major, 3/4, p. 21
  • Op.12 VI. Dille che l'amor mio*, E Major, 4/4, p. 27
  • Op.13 VII. Mio ben ricordati, D Major, 3/4, p. 32
  • Op.2 VIII. Digli, digli*, D Major, 3/4, p. 36
  • Op.3 IX. Per pieta bel Idol mio*, F Major, 3/8, p. 40
  • Op.14 X. Non so, quel dolce moto, B Flat Major, 4/4, p. 46
  • Op.15 XI. Piango, e ver, ma non procede, G minor, 4/4, p. 51
  • Op.16 XII. Dal labbro che t'accende, E Major, 3/4, p. 56
  • Op.4/17 XIII. Se mai riviene, D Minor, 3/4, p. 58
  • Op.18 XIV. Parlero non e permesso, E Major, 4/4, p. 62
  • Op.19 XV. Se tutti i miei pensieri, A Major, 4/4, p. 64
  • Op.20 XVI. Guadarlo, guaralo in volto, E Major, 3/4, p. 66
  • Op.21 XVII. Oh Dio mancarmi, D Major, 4/4, p. 68
  • Op.22 XVIII. Digli che son fedele, E Flat Major, 3/4, p. 70
  • Op.23 XIX. Pensa che sei cruda, E Minor, 4/4, p. 72
  • Op.24 XX. Torna torna innocente, G Major, 3/8, p. 74
  • Op.25 XXI. Un certo non so che veggo, E Major, 4/4, p. 76
  • Op.26 XXII. Guardami, guardami prima in volto, D Major, 4/4, p. 78
  • Op.27 XXIII. Parto, se vuoi cosi, E Flat Major, 4/4, p. 80
  • Op.28 XXIV. Volga al Ciel se ti, D Minor, 3/4, p. 82
  • Op.29 XXV. Guarda se in questa volta, F Major, 4/4, p. 84
  • Op.30 XXVI. Quanto mai felice, D Major, 3/4, p. 86
  • Op.31 XXVII. Ah che neldi'sti, D Major, 4/4, p. 88
  • Op.32, XXVIII. Dopp'un tuo Sguardo, F Major, 3/4, p. 90
  • Op.33 XXIX. Serbero fra'Ceppi, G major, 4/4, 92
  • Op.34 XXX. Figlio se piu non vivi moro, F Major, 4/4, p. 94
  • Op.35 XXXI. Non ti respondo, C Major, 3/4, p. 96
  • Op.36 XXXII. Povero cor perche palpito, G Major, 3/4, p. 99
  • Op.37 XXXIII. Non v'e piu barbaro, C Minor, 3/8, p. 102
  • Op.38 XXXIV. Se de'tuoi lumi al fuoco amor, E major, 4/4, p. 106
  • Op.39 XXXV. Se tutto tosto me sdegno, E Major, 4/4, p. 109
  • Op.40 XXXVI. Ai negli occhi un tel incanto, D Major, 4/4 (marked 2/4 but there are 4 crochets to the bar), p. 112
  • Op.41 XXXVII. Come poteste de Dio, F Major, 4/4, p. 116
  • Op.42 XXXVIII. Che sorte crudele, G Major, 4/4, p. 119
  • Op.43 XXXIX. Se almen potesse al pianto, G Minor, 4/4, p. 122
  • Op.44 XXXX. Se viver non posso lunghi, D Major, 3/8, p. 125
  • Op.45 XXXXI. Fedel faro faro cara cara, D Major, 3/4, p. 128
  • Op.46 XXXXII. Non ha ragione, F Major, 4/4, p. 131

Literature about the Count[edit]

Biographies[edit]

The best-known biography is Isabel Cooper-Oakley's The Count of St. Germain (1912), which gives a satisfactory biographical sketch. It is a compilation of letters, diaries, and private records written about the count by members of the French aristocracy who knew him in the 18th century. Another interesting biographical sketch can be found in The History of Magic, by Eliphas Levi, originally published in 1913.[31]
Numerous French and German biographies also have been published, among them Der Wiedergänger: Das zeitlose Leben des Grafen von Saint-Germain by Peter Krassa, Le Comte de Saint-Germain by Marie-Raymonde Delorme, and L'énigmatique Comte De Saint-Germain by Pierre Ceria and François Ethuin. In his work Sages and Seers (1959), Manly Palmer Hall refers to the biography Graf St.-Germain by E. M. Oettinger (1846).[32]

Books attributed to the Count[edit]

Discounting the snippets of political intrigue, a few musical pieces, and one mystical poem, there are only two pieces of writing attributed to the Count: La Très Sainte Trinosophie and the untitled Triangular Manuscript.
One book attributed to the Count of Saint Germain is La Très Sainte Trinosophie (The Most Holy Trinosophia), a beautifully illustrated 18th century manuscript that describes in symbolic terms a journey of spiritual initiation or an alchemical process, depending on the interpretation. This book has been published several times, most notably by Manly P. Hall, in Los Angeles, California, in 1933. The attribution to St. Germain rests on a handwritten note scrawled inside the cover of the original manuscript, stating that this was a copy of a text once in St. Germain's possession.[10]However, despite Hall's elaborate introduction describing the Count's legend, The Most Holy Trinosophia shows no definitive connection to him.
The second work attributed to St. Germain is the untitled 18th century manuscript in the shape of a triangle. The two known copies of the Triangular Manuscript exist as Hogart Manuscript 209 and 210 (MS 209 and MS 210). Both currently reside in the Manly Palmer Hall Collection of Alchemical Manuscripts at the Getty Research Library.[33] Nick Koss decoded and translated this manuscript in 2011 and it was published as The Triangular Book of St. Germain by Ouroboros Press in 2015.[34] Unlike the first work, it mentions St. Germain directly as its originator. The book describes a magical ritual by which one can perform the two most extraordinary feats that characterized the legend of Count of St. Germain, namely procurement of great wealth and extension of life.

In Theosophy[edit]

Main article: St. Germain (Theosophy)
Myths, legends, and speculations about St. Germain began to be widespread in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and continue today. They include beliefs that he is immortal, the Wandering Jew, an alchemist with the "Elixir of Life", a Rosicrucian, and that he prophesied the French Revolution. He is said to have met the forger Giuseppe Balsamo (alias Cagliostro) in London and the composer Rameau in Venice. Some groups honor Saint Germain as a supernatural being called an ascended master.
Madame Blavatsky and her pupil, Annie Besant, both claimed to have met the count, who was traveling under a different name.[citation needed]

In fiction[edit]

The count has inspired a number of fictional creations: