A few years ago, this forum (actually its VantageNet forerunner) was responsible for my delving into a bit of research into secondary sources on the 18th century Comte de Saint Germain, whom someone had referred to as the inspiration for Count Petofi.
Recently in another thread, Gothick suggested some other potential candidates who may have contributed to the Petofi character. Without commenting on his information (which I'm less familiar with), I thought I'd share some of what I found out about St. Germain. Trying to find accurate information on the historical Comte de St. Germain isn't easy, so I may be saving someone else the time and effort of sorting through some of the rather questionable information surrounding him. (My interest in St. Germain happened to dovetail with another interest I was involved with at the time where St. Germain also made an appearance and incidentally introduced me to alchemy. It also gave me an idea for a section of my Angelique story -- which I'm not too optimistic about ever completing. My story has flashbacks of Miranda du Val leaving the American colonies for Europe, where she transforms herself into Angelique before winding up in the West Indies ... )
I should also mention that doing a simple web search on St. Germain isn't as easy as you might think. There are endless variations on the form of the name: sometimes "saint" is spelled out, sometimes it's abbreviated "St."; sometimes there's a hyphen between Saint (or St.) and Germain and sometimes not; sometimes one sees "Comte" (French for "count") and sometimes "Comte de" with any of these variations, and sometimes "Count." Once you've gone through all those possibilities, much of the information about St. Germain you'll find on the Internet is unreliable, to put it mildly.
The Comte de St. Germain (a pseudonym; his real name is unknown) was a "mystery man" of apparently unlimited wealth who moved among the highest circles of nobility in Europe in the late 1700s, charming several of the crowned heads of Europe, who usually gave him free lodging on palace grounds sometimes for years (remind you of Collinwood's many extended guests?
). In the centuries that followed, myths about him grew, until he became an immortal figure said to still be living today, or an Ascended Master. Dubious memoirs circulated wild rumors about his strange powers, prophecies, and immortality. He became popularly associated with secret societies and alchemy. Despite the speciousness of some of the claims about him, authentic sources of the time do recount him as a remarkable man, though a few detractors considered him a charlatan and liar. (The sardonic nature of Voltaire's often-quoted reference to him seems to have gone over the heads of the "true believers.")
The Comte was fluent in many languages, was an accomplished painter, violinist, and composer. (Some of his music has been published by the Philosophical Research Association; none of his paintings are extant.) When he died (his death in 1784 and his will are well documented), it was discovered that he owned nothing but some old clothes and toilet articles. No paintings, diamonds, books, manuscripts, musical scores or instruments were found.
A highly skeptical account of the "Comte's" doings can be found in
The Myth of the Magus by E. M. Butler (Oxford Univ. Press). That's probably the best overview -- especially if you enjoy a little debunking. The most detailed source I discovered is a scholarly biography by Jean Overton Fuller,
The Comte of Saint Germain, published in England in the 1980s. Fuller is a Theosophist, i.e. a member of a metaphysical group that claims St. Germain as an Ascended Master. Fuller gives the Comte the benefit of the doubt on nearly every front, but she also bravely cuts through the vast amount of unreliable sources and fabricated testimonies to reveal him as primarily a chemist and entrepreneur who had a philosophical bent. She discounts the popular beliefs that he was an alchemist, a Mason, and denies his reputed authorship of "La Tres Sainte Trinosophie" (The Most Holy Trinosophia).
After all this library legwork over the years, I recently found a website for the "Fortean Times" that is unique in presenting accurate information about St. Germain. The article was written a couple of years ago (after I had done all of my reading). The URL is: Â
http://www.forteantimes.com/articles/146_stgermain.shtmlDespite Fuller's efforts towards a balanced biography, her account fails to even consider what kept nagging at me as I investigated other sources: the "count" sounds suspiciously like a con man. A year or so after I had done most of my reading, French conman Christophe Rocancourt was in the news and I was struck by a number of similarities. Both St. Germain and Raconcourt were suave, polished men who moved comfortably among top celebrities, gave the appearance of great wealth, were fluent in many languages, were art connoisseurs, and traveled much of the globe under a variety of aliases. In reality, the jetset Rocancourt was a lower class conman with a rapsheet who was busy bilking investors on the East coast while wining and dining Hollywood celebrities on the West coast (he was kissed by Mickey Rourke and married a Playboy centerfold). Rocancourt was known as the "Hamptons Hoaxer" and the "Counterfeit Rockefeller," after his claim to be heir of an otherwise unknown French branch of the Rockefeller family. (He is actually the son of a prostitute and is currently being extradited from Canada to the U.S. to face a number of charges.) St. Germain claimed to be a long-lost scion of the Transylvanian House of Rakoczy and rightful heir to a throne.
What does all this have to do with Petofi? Petofi does have a few things in common with the Comte de St. Germain: both are cultured sophisticates who travel under false identities, both claim titles, are supposedly immortal and possess magical powers. The Comte might well have been the initial inspiration for the Count. However, the path diverges from that point on. Petofi's associations with the gypsies, his suffering from the werewolf curse, his ownership of the last unicorn, and his evil nature turn him into a very different character from the real life Comte de St. Germain.
