Introduction

• Harry Domela, a trickster who became one of the most infamous personalities of the Roaring Twenties, lived his whole life as a persona ficta.

• In 1918, a putsch was being planned in Berlin when the Freikorps, a private paramilitary organization that 15-year-old Domela was serving in in his home Latvia, received a call.

• Domela was left alone, lost, and destitute when the putsch failed because his regiment had been demobilized.

• He was not permitted to work and was not granted a German passport.

• To change his hopeless circumstances, Domela made the decision to join high society. Utilizing noble names and titles, he adopted fictitious identities.

• When one of these deceptions failed in 1926, it forever altered his life.

• The tale emphasizes both the gullibility of the rich, privileged elite of Germany at the time and its fixation with monarchy.

Charismatic chancer

• Domela relocated to Hamburg when he was 20 years old and started playing cards for a living.

• He used it to go to Heidelberg, a renowned academic town, where he spent a few weeks disguising himself as Prince Lieven, a lieutenant in the Fourth Reichswehr cavalry unit, Potsdam, and projecting a sense of assurance.

  • He made friends with several of the elitist, snobby student groups, and they readily welcomed him.

  • He appreciated the extravagant entertainment, fine dining, and company very much.

• Domela was aware that his lies may be discovered at any moment, however, he then proceeded to the city of Erfurt before that could happen.

  • He made his choice of one of the best hotels, checked in under the name Baron Korff, and made a request for one of the top suites.

  • The hotel manager saw a remarkable likeness between the new customer with the formal manners and young Wilhelm of Hohenzollern, the grandson of Kaiser Wilhelm, the last German monarch.

  • Both males had a similar build and look, and they were around the same age.

  • The front desk clerk at the hotel mused that the prince may be traveling under the alias Baron Korff. Around Erfurt, the rumor first spread.

  • Many aristocratic Germans were remained loyal to the Hohenzollerns, the ousted royal dynasty, despite the fact that the monarchy had been dissolved in 1918.

  • Despite Domela's insistence that he wasn't the prince, he was content to discreetly maintain the illusion, particularly since it meant he wouldn't have to pay his hotel bill.

• When every employee at his hotel greeted him as Your Majesty—a sign that news had spread—Domela made a trip to Berlin but swiftly flew back to Erfurt.

  • He finally gave in when the mayor asked him to sign a book during a visit, writing "Wilhelm, Prince of Prussia."

  • Domela, the "son" of Crown Prince Wilhelm and Crown Princess Cecilie, spent the next several weeks thoroughly embracing his new royal image.

  • He received invitations to many towns in the area, where the wealthy and titled competed to organize banquets and hunting excursions in his honor.

  • Ladies stopped to curtsy and gentlemen bowed as he strolled the streets, while soldiers saluted him in the open.

  • Domela never requested money, despite the fact that he took several presents on his "trips," including royal box opera tickets.

  • He delighted in the advantages of his magnificent deceit, especially the free board and lodging, but quickly became repulsed by the adoring praise that greeted him, especially since the nation was now a republic.

• Additionally, he was aware that he could not maintain the façade forever.

The Real Harry Domela

• Harry Domela was born in Kurland, a duchy that had been given up to the Russians in 1795, in 1904 or 1905 to a modest but honorable family (now part of Latvia).

• His parents belonged to the minority group of Baltic Germans.

• Domela's father passed away shortly after his birth; he eventually lost contact with his mother and his brother was killed in World War I.

• He enlisted in the German volunteer army to fight the Latvians at the age of 15.

• Later, he was stripped of his citizenship and joined thousands of other poor people struggling to live in a post-World War II Germany that was in ruins.

• Domela made a little income despite not having any identification, but she eventually lost her job and began to travel.

• Domela acquired the knowledge and characteristics required to pass for an aristocrat after being alerted to the large number of dispossessed aristocracy in the area (Germany's nobility had lately had their titles and position taken away).

Changing fortunes

• The local press picked up on the tale of the prince's visit to Heidelberg at the start of 1927.

  • The attention being paid to a former royal was criticized by several pundits.

  • Domela made the decision to go to France and enlist in the Foreign Legion because of fear that word would get out about the reports and expose him.

  • Police detained him as he got on the train.

• Domela was imprisoned in Cologne, Germany for the next seven months as she awaited her fraud trial.

• Harry Domela authored a book titled A Sham Prince: The Life and Adventures of Harry Domela written by himself in Prison at Cologne.

• After receiving his first advance from his publisher, he wrote a heartfelt letter and sent a bouquet of flowers from behind bars to his "mother," Crown Princess Cecilie.

• The court found that while he had taken advantage of well-known people in society, his plan had been mostly harmless, and he was exonerated after his trial.

• When he unexpectedly showed up to Crown Princess Cecilie's royal residence shortly after his release, she even extended an invitation to him for tea.

• With his book, Domela achieved real success: roughly 120,000 copies were sold.

  • Domela even portrayed himself in one of the two plays that were based on his life.

  • He also sold the film rights and appeared in The False Prince (1927) when it was made.

• Domela established a modest movie theater in Berlin in 1929. The False Prince was shown as it began.

  • In the end, the movie didn't do well. The first act of his life came to an end as it cost Domela progressively more money.

  • Domela sought for new prospects as a result of his financial position and the growing fascist sentiment in Berlin.

  • He left Germany for the Netherlands in 1933 while posing as Victor Szakja.

New beginnings

• Domela often went to communist demonstrations in Amsterdam to support the Soviet Union.

  • He met Jef Last, a left-leaning Dutch author, during one of these events. last introduced Domela to André Gide, a French novelist.

  • They became close, talking late into the night about Hölderlin and Nietzsche.

• As a homosexual, Domela had little choice but to stay in his adoptive country since, by 1936, the Nazi party had taken over Germany.

  • Instead, as determined antifascists, he and Last were admitted into a Spanish Republican battalion at the start of the Spanish Civil War.

  • The Civil War came to a conclusion in 1939, and Domela left for France.

• His life was characterized by the same rootless cycle of leftist agitation and jail experienced by hundreds of destitute antifascists at the time throughout Europe.

  • He was temporarily held by the Vichy France dictatorship in a prison camp until his friend André Gide used his connections to secure his release.

• Domela then traveled to Belgium where, as an undocumented foreigner, he was dependent on friends like Last and Gide for financial assistance.

  • He went back to the south of France, where he was imprisoned for 18 months and was once again incarcerated.

  • He received a visa to Mexico and departed Europe in 1942.

Into Obscurity

• Domela was apprehended by the British in Jamaica while traveling to South America as an unauthorized immigrant.

  • For an additional 2.5 years, he remained behind bars.

  • He traveled to Cuba after being freed and was engaged in a vehicle accident there, which left him with serious wounds.

  • He soon tried to commit himself but was unsuccessful since he had been depressed by his string of poor luck.

• After the Second World War, Domela moved to Venezuela and worked at a Coca-Cola facility there.

  • He continued his life of solitude before vanishing into obscurity.

  • He ultimately discovered his vocation as an art history instructor in Maracaibo in the 1960s, all the while maintaining an assumed name.

• Domela's identity was once again questioned in 1966, decades after he had spent time traveling the world under several names to escape uncomfortable inquiries about his position.

  • One of Domela's Spanish coworkers believed she was one of the thousands of ex-Nazi party members who fled Germany at the conclusion of World War II and sought asylum in South America.

  • An affidavit revealing Domela's real identity was given to the accused by Domela's old acquaintance Jef Last.

  • Despite having his reputation restored, Domela was nevertheless fired from his job at the school.

  • Domela is said to have spent the remainder of his life in hiding.

  • On October 4th, 1979, he passed away without money.

Impersonating royalty

• Ambitious con artists have used the titles of kings, queens, princes, princesses, and other royals throughout history.

• Some of these con artists pretended to be legitimate kings, both alive and dead, while others created fictitious titles and even made up whole nations.

• Their goals change from situation to situation.

• Some saw the farce as an opportunity to advance politically, financially, or just to live out a dream of being a member of the aristocracy.

• Princess Anastasia Romanov of Russia is one royal whose likeness has shown often in impersonations. Bolshevik militants murdered her and her family in 1918.

• Despite the fact that her remains was interred in an unidentified place, rumors that she was still alive persisted.

• Numerous women have asserted their identities as Anastasia, as well as those of her older sisters Maria, Tatiana, and Olga.

• However, DNA testing on bones discovered in nearby woods in 1991 revealed that the whole Romanov family was murdered simultaneously.

Related Crimes

• In 1817, Mary Baker, a cobbler's daughter, exposes upper-class vanity by posing as Princess Caraboo from the made-up island of Javasu.

• In 1830, Karl Wilhelm Naundorff, a Swindler from Germany insists in his last moments that Prince Louis-Charles, the legitimate monarch of France, is not who he claims to be.

• In 2004, Christophe Rocancourt, a French imposter who has spent his whole career defrauding investors of their money, has been sentenced to five years in prison.

  • He went by a number of identities and even claimed to be a Gallic cousin of the Rockefeller family.