The Count Of St. Germain: Who The Hell Was This Guy?
Properly covering the man known as the Comte de Saint Germain, or the Count of St. Germain, is kind of like trying to tell a historically accurate story about Jesus. What I mean is that there’s no question that these individuals existed, but some of the factual details about where they came from or what they did remain up for debate. Much like I can't say with confidence whether or not Jesus actually walked on water, I also have no idea if the Count of St. Germain could really fix flaws in diamonds or if he did, in fact, help Catherine the Great seize the Russian throne.
What I do know is that he was a big deal in Europe throughout the 18th century. Louis XV of France employed him as a diplomat, he seemed to annoy Giacomo Casanova by not ever shutting the hell up at dinner, and even Voltaire wrote of him, saying (probably sarcastically) that he “knows everything and never dies.”
Which is funny, because that was the count's entire shtick — he did appear to know everything, and most people who met him marveled at how he seemed to never age. He apparently boasted a mastery of as many as a dozen different languages, had an in-depth knowledge of almost every historical event from any time period, was a skilled(?) alchemist, and he was an accomplished musician. But he also told people he was hundreds of years old and that he had a magic elixir that kept him young, so it's a bit tough to sort fact from fiction.
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“And he said all I need to do is recruit ten family members or friends to also sell the elixir …”
Nobody really knows where he came from, and he wouldn’t tell anyone, but he showed up in Europe in the 1740s and started impressing people with his music. After a couple of years, however, his eccentricities and unwillingness to disclose anything about his background were problematic, because there was an active uprising going on in Britain, so he was arrested there as a possible spy. He wasn't one, of course, and they let him go, but you could sort of get a feel for the man they were dealing with in Horace Walpole's letter that spoke of the arrest:
“The Provost of Edinburgh is in custody of a messenger; and 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 that he does not go by his right name. 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.”
That's a lot to wrap your mind around for one guy in 1745, which is why it's so weird he found his way into Louis XV's French court just a few years later. But he did, then moved on to the Dutch Republic where he, among other things, tried to broker a peace deal between France and Britain during the Seven Years' War. From there he continued to travel throughout Europe, sharing his music and knowledge and seemingly endless monologues with anyone who would sit through a dinner with him.
The last few years of his life were spent doing alchemical experiments with, and dyeing fabric for, Prince Charles of Hesse-Kassel, in Germany. He reportedly died in 1784, but that's actually when his story starts to get weird — even weirder than some random, independently wealthy, and educated man with no history showing up one day to help the king conduct business. You see, that part about the Count of St. Germain never looking older, and trying to convince people he had figured out how to make some mystical age-defying potion? That part of the man's biography has taken on a life of its own.
Some people are convinced the guy was (still is?) legitimately immortal. There's this story about the count people like to … recount, about the time he ran into Countess von Georgy in Paris. She was surprised to see him, given she had met another Count of St. Germain some 50 years earlier in Venice who looked exactly like this one. When she asked if it was his father whom she had met, he said no, it was totally him. Of course, this resulted in predictable rumors of the count being 100 years old, which he didn't refute, and which have also since spiraled into still-existing theories of the dude having lived for at least several hundred years, if not thousands. Not only did several people claim to have seen him a few years after his death in the late 18th century, but sightings have been reported as recently as the 1970s, with one guy even claiming to be him. In fact, if you Google the dear count, you'll get recommended searches like “still alive” and “vampire,” and YouTube has a treasure trove of theories about him being some sort of ascended entity.
Pixabay
Something like this.
It's all pretty bonkers, but also probably exactly the kind of legacy the Count of St. Germain wanted to leave. He was this enigmatic figure that would seemingly materialize out of nowhere, dazzle the absolute hell out of (almost) everyone around him, then move on to the next place while leaving behind the stories of his awesomeness to spin themselves into fantastical, and often completely fictitious, tales that eventually had him attaining deity-level status. And to be fair, that is a pretty sweet legacy, and way better than the far more reasonable, non-immortal alternative:
He might've just been a really smart con artist.
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