the immortal count: comte de saint-germain (part 1)

undying alchemist, undead vampire, or a clever fraud?

Jun 26, 2026

This one has been on the back burner for a while because…well, it’s pretty challenging to track down details about an alleged immortal vampire.

After writing about Jacques St. Germain for bite size hauntings: new orleans, la, I went down a bit of a research rabbit hole to find out as much as possible about the very real Count St. Germain and see if I could get to the bottom of who (or what) he is.

This was obviously an impossible task, but I’ve done my best to compile an accurate history of his appearances, both recorded and alleged, throughout the ages, as well as some possible explanations for who or what St. Germain might be.

This one will be a two-parter because this is a tale that couldn’t possibly be told in one sitting.

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Some of you might remember the story of Jacques St. Germain:

So the story goes, St. Germain moved to the Quarter in the early 1900s. He claimed to be a descendant of Count St. Germain, a famous philosopher, alchemist, and artist who’d risen to prominence in the court of Louis XV.

While not everyone believed Jacques was a descendant of the famous Count, it was clear he was incredibly wealthy and well-educated.

Jacques could speak several languages fluently, spoke with authority on history and art, and had endless stories of his travels around the world. He was known for throwing wild, lavish parties with the finest foods and wines.

But, for as much as people enjoyed St. Germain’s company and extravagant parties, they noticed there was something off about him.

Jacques never ate or drank a drop of wine at his events. He would only drink from a flask he always kept on him, claiming he had a particular personal vintage he preferred.

And when he discussed historical events, he often spoke as if he had intimate knowledge of them—as though he had lived them.

And while these things did seem peculiar, most people wrote it off as the eccentricities of a wealthy man. After all, the guy threw a great party, and who were they to complain?

But everything changed one night when a young woman, drenched in blood, threw herself from the second-floor balcony of St. Germain’s home.

The woman dragged her broken body through the streets until she found law enforcement.

And what she told the police was so shocking, they weren’t sure what to believe.

You see, the young woman claimed Jacques St. Germain had lured her to his home, subdued her, tied her up, and attempted to slit her throat and consume her blood.

She claimed there were other women in the house he had killed with large bite marks on their necks and begged the officers to arrest him immediately.

The officers suspected the woman was likely an intoxicated sex worker who’d become a bit hysterical after a bad “date,” but promised they would investigate St. Germain.

Officers arrived at St. Germain’s home, relayed the young woman’s accusation, and asked if they could look around.

Jacques was perfectly amenable to the police and apologized for the inconvenience the young woman had caused them. And then he handed each of the officers a rather large wad of cash and asked if they could come back in the morning, as it was very late and he was tired. He swore to the officers he would answer all of their questions as soon as it was morning.

Palms sufficiently greased, the officers agreed to return first thing, as long as Jacques promised not to leave town.

Unsurprisingly, when officers returned the following morning, St. Germain was nowhere to be found, and the house looked as though it had been ransacked.

Now, the story gets murky here. In some versions, officers find exsanguinated bodies, and in others, they find what appears to be blood stains all over Jacques’ private quarters.

But all stories tend to end with the same gruesome discovery…

You see, everyone believed the flask Jacques carried had to contain some incredibly fancy wine he wasn’t willing to share with guests. So, you can imagine the officer who found a secret room, filled with what appeared to be Jacques’ private wine collection, was more than a little bit excited.

Perhaps even a bit tempted to take a swig for himself before returning to the search.

Well, the officer took a swig and practically vomited after one sip.

The bottle did contain a nice vintage, but it also contained a thick, congealed, almost metallic substance that would later be determined to be blood.

And that’s the story of Jacques.

Now, while possible vampire Jacques St. Germain might be some local New Orleans lore, the Comte de Saint-Germain (or Count St. Germain) was a very real person whose exploits and curiosities were recorded contemporaneously by famous men and women throughout history.

He was an advisor and intimate friend of King Louis XV and his mistress Madame Pompadour. He composed music with Mozart, traveled with Casanova, argued philosophy with Voltaire, helped Catherine the Great take the throne from her husband, and gave Anton Mesmer, the father of mesmerism, the foundational principles for his work on magnetism.

St. Germain was, by all accounts, an incredibly charming and intelligent man of middle age. He played various instruments with the skills of a master, spoke multiple languages fluently, and possessed a great understanding of science, engineering, and the arts.

But he was peculiar.

He never ate or drank a drop of wine at dinners or parties, always preferring to drink his own personal vintage from a flask he kept on him at all times. And when he discussed historical events from the far past, he spoke as if he had intimate knowledge of them—as though he had lived them.

He spoke of Nero, Jesus, and Dante Alighieri, and even claimed he was in the Tower of London with Edward II. There were some who wrote off these stories as total bullshit spewed by a charlatan vying for proximity to power.

But others who saw the Count throughout the years and heard his strange stories and oddly accurate prophecies wondered if perhaps Count St. Germain was far more than a mere man.

undefined — *Engraving of the Comte de Saint Germain by Nicolas Thomas (1783).*

Now, before we dive too deep, we have to start with what we really know about St. Germain, and that’s a bit of a challenge.

Truth be told, we don’t actually know much about St. Germain’s origins, but there are plenty of rumors about who the Count might be. Some say he was a Spanish Jesuit posing as a French aristocrat; others say he was the long-believed dead prince of the Habsburg dynasty. The Marquis de Crequy once declared St. Germain was an Alsatian Jew by the name of Simon Wolff, and others claimed he was the illegitimate son of a Transylvanian prince or an Italian princess.

It’s certainly possible one of these rumors could be true, but here’s the rub: we can’t confirm anything because we don’t actually know St. Germain’s real name.

According to historical records, the Count only started going by Comte Saint-Germain in the 1740s, which might not be as big of an issue for historians had he not used various other aliases in the past, such as the Marquess de Montferrat, Chevalier Schoening, Count Weldon, Count Soltikoff, Manuel Doria, and Prince Ragoczy.

These names don’t really lead us anywhere in particular

Based on his appearance and anecdotal evidence, historians believe he was born in either 1691 or 1712.

Though, if you asked the Count, he would tell you, you’ll need to go back a lot further.

So, let’s begin with Count St. Germain’s history according to him.

Now, to be clear, the Count’s anecdotes about his strangely long life are impossible to prove, given he’s gone by many different names, but the amount of detail he provided about these events was so specific, one must admit there’s either some grain of truth or the man was one of the greatest charlatans of all time.

It’s difficult to date when the Count first makes an appearance from his stories. He claimed to know King Solomon and to have participated in the engineering of the Temple of Solomon, which was finished around 957 BC.

Now, if this is true, it might explain some of the Count’s vast knowledge of alchemy and esoterica. Though it’s been removed from Christian texts, both Judaic and Muslim texts, as well as various historical records, indicate King Solomon was known as a practitioner of the occult arts.

Even more interesting, Solomon may have been one of the first owners of the fabled Philosopher’s Stone.

And what is the Philosopher’s stone?

It’s not actually a stone at all, but rather a tincture or powder that could be used to transmute base metals into gold. It was also believed to be the key ingredient to create the Elixir of Life.

Could St. Germain have found the secret to immortality during his time with one of the greatest sorcerers and alchemists in history?

Now, from there, St. Germain claims to have met Moses’ great grandson around 600 BC, where he was given Moses’ staff (the one you may recall that allegedly parted the Red Sea).

A few hundred years later, the Count supposedly traveled to Ancient Greece, where he engaged with some of the greatest philosophers of the time. Interestingly, there are rumors he may have even influenced some of Plato’s theories on elements that would go on to become the founding principles of modern alchemical theory.

Eventually, the Count allegedly made his way to the ancient Palestinian territory of Galilee, where he claimed to travel briefly with Jesus. One of the stories the Count was known to tell was the time he attended a wedding at Cana, where Jesus turned water into wine.

There are no contemporaneous or non-curated accounts of Jesus, so there’s no way to definitively prove the Count was there, but according to those who heard his stories, he spoke more of Jesus as a philosopher and political figure than a “prophet.” At some point, according to the Count’s stories, he traveled to Rome and became embroiled in Roman politics.

According to historical records, St. Germain often mentioned Nero as one of his acquaintances. Nero was Emperor of Rome from 54 to 68 AD. If you know anything of Nero, you’ll know he is often referred to as a vicious tyrant and a mass murderer of Christians across the Roman Empire; however, many historians believe this characterization to be false.

You see, Nero, much like our favorite immortalCount, was a fan of the arts. He engaged publicly in music, theater, poetry, and even sports, which made him incredibly popular with the common man but rather hated by the wealthy elite.

Now, we don’t know much about the Count’s dealings with Nero, but here’s something rather interesting:

Nero was eventually overthrown and forced to flee Rome. He committed suicide in 68 AD. However, a rumor began to circulate in the eastern provinces that Nero was not truly dead and would eventually return. Was it just a story to rally support for rebellions, or did the Undying Count help his friend escape death in more ways than one?

His next great appearance is almost 300 years later, where he claims to have worked as a diplomat and missionary for Valentinian I.

Valentinian was generally known to be a brute, but he was a talented painter and sculptor in his spare time and had a profound appreciation for education. He also was interested in inventing new types of weapons, which, knowing the Count’s interest in engineering and metalwork, it would not be surprising if he was involved.

According to the Count, Valentinian sent him to Britain to spread Christianity to the pagans. It’s unclear if the Count actually fulfilled this mission, but he was allegedly in Cornwall around 364 AD.

We don’t know exactly how long the Count was supposed to have remained in Britain, but he would eventually journey in the 1300s to Italy, where he claimed to have befriended famed writer, philosopher, and poet Dante Alighieri.

Based on the Count’s anecdotes, it appears that he would have met Dante sometime after his exile in 1302, when he began working on The Divine Comedy. Now, a small piece of evidence in favor of the Count knowing Dante is that The Divine Comedy was a much stronger and far more expansive work than anything previously written by the poet.

And if you’ve ever read The Divine Comedy, you’ll know a big part of the plot had Dante hanging around with some people the Count claimed to have known, like the apostle Peter and Virgil.

The Count also claimed he was in England in the 1320s during the reign of Edward II, where he supposedly had rooms in the Tower of London.

He supposedly told Casanova that he spent time in Italy in the mid-1500s, engaging with the fathers of the Council of Trent, after a stint learning speculative chemistry with Francis I of France in the early 1500s.

And this takes us to the end of his personal history that cannot be corroborated.

The real question, though, is if this is true, where did the Count disappear to in between his appearances?

And more importantly, why does he seem to primarily appear during periods of political turmoil?

Now that we know the Count’s version of his story, let’s look at what can be corroborated about him.

One of the first confirmed, notable accounts of St. Germain’s time in Europe comes from English writer and politician Horace Walpole.

Walpole did not have much love for St. Germain. He thought he was a real weird dude and suspected he was lying about his status as a noble (it probably didn’t help the Count was running around telling people no one could guess his true name).

In a letter to a friend in December of 1745, Walpole discusses St. Germain’s arrest on suspicion of being part of the Jacobite Rebellion and gives a bit of background on the Count.

Walpole claimed the Count had been circulating among English society for about two years at the time of his arrest and had established himself as somewhat of a curiosity.

According to Walpole, the Count was an astonishingly adept musician and composer, but (to put it kindly) he seemed to be operating on another wavelength than the rest of society. The Count spent hours flirting and attending to noble women but claimed he’d never so much as touched a woman (or anything vaguely resembling a woman sexually). He told those around him his past was a secret but delighted in fanning the flames of rumors around him.

There were rumors he was Italian, Spanish, or possibly even Polish, given his aptitude for the language. People believed him to be a priest in disguise, a nobleman with vast secret wealth, and at some point a story circulated that St. Germain had married a wealthy heiress in Mexico, only to make off with her jewels and gold in the night.

These rumors were so pervasive that even the Prince of Wales was intrigued and attempted to get to the truth behind the man while he was in custody, but nothing about his background was ever successfully discovered.

St. Germain remained in England for some time after he was released and eventually, according to historical records, made his way to Louis XV’s Court in France, where he remained from 1748 to 1760.

There are several things that occurred during St. Germain’s time in France that are of note.

First, he made such a significant impression on Louis XV that he quickly went from intimate friend to trusted advisor and was eventually put in charge of diplomatic missions on behalf of the Crown.

Second, he managed to endear himself to the King’s favorite mistress, Madame de Pompadour, becoming a staple in her evening salons and one of her beloved “favorites.”

For those who know their French history, you’ll know this, in and of itself, was an enviable accomplishment, for whoever had Madame de Pompadour’s favor had the ear of the King.

As you can imagine, the French nobles were not pleased with this development. St. Germain was a relative unknown who had appeared at court one day and managed to charm his way to the very epicenter of French politics, but we’ll get back to that later.

Third, rumors about the Count’s potential immortality began to gain steam, and there are a few reasons for this:

The Count himself fueled some of the rumors. He often spoke of long-dead philosophers and rulers as though he knew them personally and never revealed anything about his actual age or where he was from. He was beyond well-educated, spoke multiple languages fluently, played and composed music with the skill of a true virtuoso, and was even a talented painter.

And his habits raised more than a few eyebrows.

Though the Count was often present at parties and events, he supposedly never dined with others. He claimed to subsist on a diet of only oatmeal, but no one ever saw him consume anything but wine. And for that, he tended to favor his own personal wine, which he seemed to keep on him at all times.

The Count was also a self-proclaimed alchemist, trained in the Solomonic arts, and liked to hand out diamonds and jewels as though they were candy, as proof of his mastery of alchemy.

While we have no real proof St. Germain could transmute elements into gold or jewels, there were no financial institutions that had record of ever doing business with him, which means he was either an extraordinary swindler or he had access to a seemingly endless amount of gold.

Stories of St. Germain’s peculiar antics became so wildly popular, he actually had impersonators (à la Elvis), who performed in various cafes around Paris, retelling and embellishing some of the Count’s stories for comedic effect.

And this is where it gets a little murky.

We do have a lot of very bizarre firsthand accounts of St. Germain, but there were so many rumors being circulated at the time; it’s difficult to tell which stories came from St. Germain himself and which came from impersonators trying to jazz up their act.

For example, there is a popular anecdote that St. Germain knew Jesus and was present when he turned water into wine at the wedding in Cana.

We don’t have any firsthand accounts of St. Germain saying this particular anecdote to anyone in particular, but we do know it was a popular story at the time, particularly in Paris. It’s possible he did say it, but it’s also possible one of his impersonators made up the story, and fact and fiction became conflated.

However, we do have one contemporaneous account that seems to indicate the Count was either older than he’d led others to believe or there was something odd going on.

The account comes from a Countess von Georgy who attended a soiree at Madame de Pompadour’s private residence. The elderly countess heard that a Comte de Saint Germain was present and recognized the name from her time in Venice back in the early 1700s.

Upon meeting the Count again, she was perplexed. He looked exactly like the man she’d met nearly fifty years prior, except he had not aged a day. The Countess asked St. Germain if it was perhaps his father she’d met years ago in Venice.

The Count assured her it was indeed him whom she had encountered all those years ago, and when she adamantly protested, saying it was impossible (he’d have been nearly a hundred by now), he told her it was “not impossible” and went on to describe the evening they met with astonishing accuracy.

But not everyone was as easily won over by St. Germain’s accounts of the past. According to the memoirs of ye olde bad boy, Giacomo Casanova, who first met the Count in 1757, he thought of the Count as a rather delightful imposter:

The most enjoyable dinner I had was with Madame de Robert Gergi, who came with the famous adventurer, known by the name of the Count de St. Germain. This individual, instead of eating, talked from the beginning of the meal to the end, and I followed his example in one respect as I did not eat, but listened to him with the greatest attention. It may safely be said that as a conversationalist he was unequalled.

St. Germain gave himself out for a marvel and always aimed at exciting amazement, which he often succeeded in doing. He was a scholar, linguist, musician, and chemist, good-looking, and a perfect ladies’ man. For a while he gave them paints and cosmetics; he flattered them, not that he would make them young again (which he modestly confessed was beyond him) but that their beauty would be preserved by means of a wash which, he said, cost him a lot of money, but which he gave away freely. He had contrived to gain the favour of Madame de Pompadour, who had spoken about him to the king, for whom he had made a laboratory, in which the monarch – a martyr to boredom – tried to find a little pleasure or distraction, at all events, by making dyes. The king had given him a suite of rooms at Chambord, and a hundred thousand francs for the construction of a laboratory, and according to St. Germain the dyes discovered by the king would have a materially beneficial influence on the quality of French fabrics.

This extraordinary man, intended by nature to be the king of impostors and quacks, would say in an easy, assured manner that he was three hundred years old, that he knew the secret of the Universal Medicine, that he possessed a mastery over nature, that he could melt diamonds, professing himself capable of forming, out of ten or twelve small diamonds, one large one of the finest water without any loss of weight. All this, he said, was a mere trifle to him. Notwithstanding his boastings, his bare-faced lies, and his manifold eccentricities, I cannot say I thought him offensive. In spite of my knowledge of what he was and in spite of my own feelings, I thought him an astonishing man as he was always astonishing me.

Now, I mentioned earlier that there were many nobles within the French Court that did not like the Count, and Casanova’s account of St. Germain gives us important clues as to why.

You see, the Count had aligned himself quite closely with Madame de Pompadour, who was almost universally disliked by French nobility due to the influence she held over the King.

In 1755, she was approached by an Austrian diplomat to smooth over relations between France and Austria, which resulted in the First Treaty of Versailles. The treaty cemented an alliance between France and Austria, pitting those countries against Britain and Prussia.

Unfortunately, these shifting alliances led to the Seven Years’ War, which left France, Austria, and Russia fighting against British and Prussian forces.

And it didn’t go well.

France suffered a number of brutal defeats at the hands of the Prussian army, leaving French forces decimated. They ended up losing their colonies in the Americas to the British, and the Crown was super bankrupt by the end of the war. Of course, the nobles were convinced this was all the fault of Madame de Pompadour.

Not only had she pushed the king to forge an alliance with the Austrians, but she also convinced Louis XV to attempt to broker peace with the British by sending none other than her dear friend, Count St. Germain, to the Hague to open peace talks with the British.

In March 1760, under the guise of borrowing money on behalf of Louis XV, St. Germain went to Amsterdam, where he briefly went on a small side quest to help the Count of Gronsveld open a porcelain factory.

But while the porcelain factory flourished, things didn’t work out for St. Germain.

The British were unwilling to engage with St. Germain without proper credentials, which proved he was there on behalf of the Crown, and word got back to the French Foreign Minister, the Duc de Choiseul, who was very pro-Austrian and anti-St. Germain, that Madame de Pompadour and some other nobles were attempting to outmaneuver him politically.

The Duc de Choiseul couldn’t touch the King’s favored mistress, but he could remove one of her favorite pawns from the board. So, he leapt into action and convinced Louis XV that St. Germain’s interference was not merely problematic but dangerous and encouraged him to disavow the Count and demand his arrest.

Now, all of this was going on in Holland, which meant France was asking the Dutch to intervene and extradite St. Germain. They weren’t particularly interested in getting involved with court politics in France, but they understood ignoring the French King’s request might be taken the wrong way.

So, they agreed the best course of action was to tell the Count it was time to go and in his best interest not to return to France. The Dutch obtained a passport from the British ambassador and sent St. Germain off to London in May 1760.

St. Germain’s exile was not all bad.

He apparently became very close friends with a concerned mother during his time in London, and when her daughter was in the midst of a coup to take the crown from an increasingly unstable husband, the Count offered to travel to St. Petersburg and offer his assistance.

That daughter would go on to be known as Catherine the Great.

Now, eventually, after a bit of a tour, he purchased a large piece of land in Ubbergen in the Netherlands and then went to stay with his friend, Prince Charles of Hesse-Kassel.

Charles built out a rather large factory/laboratory near his summer home for St. Germain, which included a residence for the Count.

St. Germain remained there for several years, supposedly working on new techniques for fabric dye, as well as advancing his other alchemical work.

And then, according to historical records, Charles left town for a brief period of time, and while he was gone, the Count died from pneumonia on February 27, 1784. We don’t know the details surrounding his death or how it was discovered, since Charles was away at the time, but the Count’s death is recorded at a local church in Eckernförde, and there is a record of payment for a private burial, but not much else.

No family came forward to claim the Count’s possessions, and the town eventually auctioned off what little remained.

The strange thing, though, was that for a wealthy, well-traveled man, St. Germain didn’t leave much behind. All that remained were a few linen shirts and trousers, some sundries, a small amount of money, and a stack of bills that had already been paid.

Among his possessions there were no valuables, no trinkets from his travels, no letters or notes from the work he had been doing for the Prince, and even his violin, which he always kept with him, was missing. And for those who knew the Count, this was strange.

St. Germain was always handing out jewels and treasures from his travels. He wore fine clothes and seemed to have an endless supply of money.

How could such a grand person die so quietly and leave so little behind?

I guess…that’s assuming he really did die in 1784…

You see, according to historical records, it seems the Count might have faked his own death because over the centuries there have been multiple credible accounts of political figures, writers, and artists who claimed to have been visited by the Count.

So, did St. Germain discover the secret to eternal life?

Was he an ancient vampire from Babylonian times?

Or do a lot of short, middle-aged, white men look similar enough that any good trickster could pretend to be the Immortal Count?

When we meet again, we’ll discuss alleged sightings of the Count throughout the ages and see if we can determine who or what the real Count St. Germain might be.

And that’s all she wrote…for now…

I hope you liked our little sojourn into the peculiar tale of the Immortal Count.

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Resources:

bite size hauntings: new orleans, la by The Poison Path

Comte de Saint-Germain by Encyclopedia Britannica

Finding Count St. Germain by Jessie Desmond

Jacques St. Germain, Vampire of the French Quarter by A. P. Sylvia

Mémoires de Mon Temps, Dictés par Landgrave Charles, Prince de Hesse by Karl of Hesse-Cassel