The Count of St. Germain (French: Comte de Saint Germain; French pronunciation: [kɔ̃t də sɛ̃ ʒɛʁmɛ̃]; 1691 or 1712 – 27 February 1784), whose real name and origins remain unknown, was a European adventurer who had interests and achievements in science, alchemy, philosophy, and the arts. He rose to prominence in the European high society of the mid-18th century due to his works and interests. He associated himself with some of the most prominent figures of the era, including Giacomo Casanova, Voltaire and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
The count used a variety of names and titles, including the Marquess of Montferrat (Fr. Marquis de Montferrat), Count Bellamarre (Fr. Comte Bellamarre), Knight Schoening (Fr. Chevalier Schoening), Count Weldon, Count Soltikoff (Fr. Comte Soltikoff), Manuel Doria, Graf Tzarogy, and Prince Ragoczy (De. Prinz Ragoczy). He appears to have begun to be known under the title of the Count of St Germain during the early 1740s.
He is said to have made far-fetched claims (such as being 500 years old), leading Voltaire to dub him "the Wonderman", and that "he is a man who does not die, and who knows everything".
Note: In this letter dated April 15, 1760, Voltaire addresses the situation of the Comte de St. Germain, who had recently fled to evade an arrest warrant.
Your ministers will certainly have better plans than I do in Breda; the Duke of Choiseul, M. de Kaunitz, and Mr. Pitt do not reveal their secrets to me. It is said that only M. de Saint-Germain knows them – he who once dined in Trent with the fathers of the Council, and who may perhaps have the honor of being received in audience by Your Majesty in about fifty years. He is a man who never dies and who knows everything. As for me, whose career is drawing to its close and who knows nothing, I can only hope that you may know the Duke of Choiseul.
Prince Charles of Hesse-Kassel called him "one of the greatest philosophers who ever lived".
The count's origins and background remain obscure; nothing is known with certainty of his origins. Toward the end of his life, he claimed to be the son of Francis II Rákóczi, the prince of Transylvania; while without hard evidence, this would account for his wealth and evident fine education.
The will of Francis II mentions Leopold George, his eldest son, who was believed to have died at the age of four. It has been speculated that his identity was falsified to protect against persecution from the Habsburgs. At the time of his arrival in Schleswig in 1779, he told Prince Charles of Hesse-Kassel that he was 88 years old, making his year of birth 1691, when Francis II was 15 years old.
St. Germain was supposedly educated in Italy by Gian Gastone, the grand duke of Tuscany and allegedly his mother's brother-in-law. He was believed to be a student at the University of Siena.
Throughout his adult life, he deliberately concealed his actual name and origins, using a multitude of pseudonyms in the different places 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.
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. Later, in a letter of December of that same year, Horace Walpole mentions 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 [substitute, i.e. for a woman]. He sings, plays on the violin wonderfully, composes, is mad, and not very sensible. He is called an Italian, a Spaniard, a Pole; 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 an 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.
The Count gave two private musical performances in London in April and May 1749. On one such occasion, Lady Jemima Yorke described how she was "very much entertain'd by him or at him the 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". 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.
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.
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". 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".
St. Germain appeared in the French court around 1748. In 1749, he was employed by Louis XV for diplomatic missions.