Truth and fiction about Wolf Messing - fortuneteller, telepathist, hoaxer and entertainer

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Name Wolf Messing surrounded by a halo of mystery and gave rise to so many legends that it is extremely difficult to find true facts among them. The creation of the myth was facilitated not even by Messing himself, but by journalists who willingly retell the stories invented by their colleagues. And the blame is the autobiography of the great predictor and telepath, published in 1965 in the journal Science and Religion, which has undergone such “literary processing” that there is almost no real Messing behind the spectacular episodes.

There have been many attempts to "expose" the pop telepath, but N. Kitaev's version seems to be the most reasoned. The author carefully checked all the moments of Messing's biography and came to the conclusion that most of them are fiction.

There is a well-known legend about how 11-year-old Messing rode the train to Berlin without a ticket. Allegedly, he managed to hypnotize the controller, and he took the piece of paper handed to him for a ticket. This story raises doubts, if only because similar plots are present in the biographies of many other psychics and telepaths. Also in the memoirs it is reported that during a tour in Vienna in 1915, the fortuneteller met with Einstein in his apartment. Einstein's biographers say: he did not have an apartment in Vienna, and in the period from 1913 to 1925. he did not come to this city at all.

The first chapter of Messing's autobiography tells that in 1937 he predicted the death of Hitler while performing in a theater in Warsaw. After that, 200 thousand marks were promised for his head, and in 1939 the fortuneteller was arrested and imprisoned. According to the memoirs, the telepath, with an effort of thought, forced all the police station to gather in his cell, then hypnotized them, locked them in the cell and escaped. But there is no mention in either German or Polish archives that Hitler knew of his existence. In addition, there is no documentary evidence that such an artist performed in pre-war Poland and that he was persecuted.

Having fled from Poland from the Nazis to the USSR, Messing allegedly met with Stalin more than once, and he arranged checks on him. So, once he was offered with the help of hypnosis to get one hundred thousand rubles from the State Bank on a clean form, which he did. Specialists of the State Bank argue that the very process of receiving money is incorrectly described in the memoirs: one cashier could not give such an amount, this procedure implied the participation of an accountant and auditors. Therefore, most likely, this scene is nothing more than fiction. And the very fact of meetings with Stalin also remains in question. Neither the Central Archives of the FSB of Russia nor the archives of the Central Committee of the CPSU have preserved information about Messing's contacts with Stalin.

It is only known that during the Second World War, a telegram was published in the newspaper on behalf of Stalin with gratitude for the personal savings donated to the defense fund, for which two fighters were built. Messing really had money - in the 1940s-1960s. he actively performed throughout the Union with "psychological mind reading experiments." He received the title of artist of the State Concert and surprised the audience with his ability to find hidden objects and follow the mental commands of the audience. Telepathic speeches were successful, and he made good money. According to one version, his "voluntary" donation of a large sum was an insistent recommendation of the NKVD officers.

The biggest controversy is Messing's ability to read minds from a distance. Scientists tried to explain this by "ideomotor acts", or "rudimentary movements": when a person clearly imagines something, his muscles unconsciously make micromotions, which, just like facial expressions, can read a person's intentions. Whether it is possible to achieve such a level of perfection in this to convince viewers of their psychic abilities is an open question. But there is no point in challenging Messing's talent.

Where did so many inconsistencies in Messing's autobiography come from? The fact is that its author was not the telepath himself, but the journalist Mikhail Khvastunov - with the help of fiction, he fueled the interest of readers in science. After a personal conversation with Messing, he subjected the text to such literary processing that almost nothing remained of the original.

Messing is credited with prophecies about the end of World War II and the death of Stalin, however, it worked here Cassandra syndrome: predictions that no one believed.