Catherine Radziwill

Princess Catherine Radziwiłł (30 March 1858 – 12 May 1941)[1][2] was a Polish princess from the Polish-Lithuanian aristocratic Radziwiłł family. She was born as Countess Ekaterina Adamovna Rzewuska. She married Prince Wilhelm Radziwiłł at age 15[1] and moved to Berlin to live with his family. It was speculated that she was the author of a book gossiping about the German Emperor William II and Berlin society in 1884 under the pen name Paul Vasili.[2]

She stalked the English-born South African politician Cecil Rhodes and asked him to marry her, but he refused. She then got revenge by forging his name on a promissory note. She was convicted of forging Rhodes' signature and spent time in a South African jail for her crimes.[3][4]

Catherine Radziwiłł played a major role in the history of the antisemitic hoax The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In 1921, she gave a private lecture in New York. She claimed that the Protocols were compiled in 1904-1905 by Russian journalists Matvei Golovinski and Manasevich-Manuilov at the direction of Pyotr Rachkovsky, Chief of the Okhrana, the Russian secret service in Paris.[5] Golovinski worked together with Charles Joly (son of Maurice Joly) at Le Figaro in Paris. This account, however, contradicts the basic chronology of the Protocols publication, as they were already published in 1903 in the Znamya newspaper. Moreover, in 1902, Rachkovsky was dismissed from the Paris Okhrana and returned to Saint Petersburg. Catherine Radziwill's statements were cited during the Berne Trial by Russian witnesses in 1934 and by experts in 1935; they gave evidence that her date of 1905, when Matvei Golovinski would have shown her a manuscript of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion ("with a big blue ink spot on the first page") in Paris, is obviously an error of chronology, possibly caused by a typo in her article published in The American Hebrew and reprinted by The New York Times.[6]

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References

  1. ^ a b Books by Author Catherine Radziwiłł, TomFolio.com. The New York Times, on 13 May 1941, reported that the death of Catherine Radziwiłł occurred on 11 May.
  2. ^ a b Farrant, Leda. (2000). The Princess from St. Petersburg: The Life and Times of Princess Catherine Radziwiłł.
  3. ^ Roberts, Brian. (1969). Cecil Rhodes and the princess. Hamilton. ISBN 0-241-01603-7.
  4. ^ Anthony, Thomas. (November 1997). Rhodes: The Race for Africa. London Bridge. ISBN 0-563-38742-4.
  5. ^ "PRINCESS RADZIWILL QUIZZED AT LECTURE". The New York Times. 4 March 1921. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9800EFDD133CE533A25757C0A9659C946095D6CF. Retrieved 2008-08-10.  cf. Full article
  6. ^ "Protocols Forged in Paris" Says Princess Radziwill In an Exclusive Interview With ISAAC LANDMAN, published in The American Hebrew, February 25, 1921, Volume 108 Number 15, page 422.

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