Wolf Grigorievich Messing: the most accurate predictions about Russia and Ukraine. Biography of wolf messing

- an artist of the original genre, a psychiatrist, a hypnotist who performed in the USSR with psychological experiments "in reading the minds" of the audience, Honored Artist of the RSFSR

If Wolf Messing was lucky with something, then with the date of birth. 1899, the eve of the 20th century, when the belief in miracles all over the world was revived with unprecedented strength. But with the place of birth came a misfire - beggar Gura-Kalwaria near Warsaw. The town was inhabited by the Jewish poor, to which the family of the future sorcerer belonged. His father, an embittered loser nicknamed Gershka the tramp, lived by renting a tiny garden. Wolf and his three brothers from childhood worked in this garden, caring for apple trees and plums, and as a reward they received only their father's abuse and cuffs. The caress of the mother did not comfort the children for long - Hana Messing died early from consumption.

Wolf Messing was a strange boy... When he was four years old, his mother noticed that he was walking in a dream. Clever people advised to put a basin of cold water by his bed - stepping into it, the boy woke up. In the end, he was cured of sleepwalking. Around the same time, it was discovered that nature had endowed Wolf with a phenomenal memory. He easily memorized entire pages from the Talmud.

The father decided to make Wolf a rabbi - a faithful piece of bread for his son, and at the same time for him. But the boy, having attended the performance of the visiting circus, was determined to become a magician. The beatings gave nothing, and the head of the family decided to use a trick. One evening, Wolf saw a giant bearded figure in a white robe at the front porch of their house. "My son! The stranger exclaimed, "go to the yeshiva and serve the Lord!" The shocked boy fainted.

That day eleven Messing committed three serious offenses at once... He secretly left his parents' house, stole money from a donation cup hanging in front of the synagogue (there were only nine kopecks there), and got on the first train that came across.

Huddled under the bench, he stared in horror at the controller walking towards him.
"Hey guy, show me your ticket!" - this voice will sound in Messing's ears for many years to come. Grabbing a dirty piece of newspaper from the floor, he thrust it into the controller, passionately, with all his heart, wishing that everything would somehow work out. Several painful moments passed, and the controller's face softened: “Why are you sitting under the bench with your ticket? Get out, you fool! "

So boy first realized that he possesses some kind of incomprehensible power... Later, some of Messing's biographers told this story differently. As if, on his silent order, the controller jumped out of the train and crashed to death. Any event in Messing's life has become overgrown with legends, which today are almost impossible to understand.
The biographers were not helped either by his memoirs "About Himself", published in the mid-1960s in several Soviet journals at once. The science fiction writer Mikhail Vasiliev, who wrote them down, also worked hard, decorating the biography of his hero with incredible details. Was it worth the trouble? Wolf Messing's life looks amazing even without any embellishments.

The train brought him to Berlin, a huge city where no one was waiting for the little Jewish tramp. Wolf delivered things, washed dishes, cleaned shoes - and was constantly desperately hungry. Finally he collapsed in the street unconscious. He was almost sent to the morgue - a weak heartbeat was heard only at the last moment. A unique patient, who lay in a deep swoon for three days, was admitted to the clinic of the famous psychiatrist Abel. Opening his eyes, the boy said: "Don't take me to an orphanage!" The doctor was amazed - he was just thinking about it ...

Having discovered the boy's extraordinary gift, Abel was the first to try to study his abilities. And even develop them. But the reports of the experiments burned down in his office during the war. And this happened more than once - as if some force persistently and imperiously hid everything connected with Messing.

I got interested in "Wonder Child" impresario Zelmeister. He got Wolf into a circus. Now the boy spent three days a week in a crystal coffin, plunging himself for the amusement of the public into a state of catalepsy - something like a faint, accompanied by complete numbness of the body. He also performed with other numbers - he pierced his neck with a steel needle, looked for things hidden by the audience. The rest of the time Wolf Messing devoted to his education - he talked about psychology with the best specialists of that time, read a lot.

Now on the streets he tried to "eavesdrop" thoughts of passers-by... Checking himself, he approached the milkmaid and said something like: "Don't worry, your daughter will not forget to milk the goat." And the shop assistant reassured him: "The debt will be returned to you soon." The amazed exclamations of the "test subjects" indicated that the boy really managed to read other people's thoughts.

In 1915, the young telepathist came on tour to Vienna. Here they became interested in two giants of science of the XX century - the founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud and the genius physicist Albert Einstein... During the demonstration session, fulfilling Freud's mental task, Messing approached Einstein and pulled out three hairs from his luxurious mustache with tweezers. Since then, he has met Freud more than once. Alas, these meetings left no trace in any of the works of the Viennese psychoanalyst. Perhaps Freud simply retreated before a phenomenon that he could not explain in any way. But it was thanks to Freud that Wolf parted with the circus, deciding: no more cheap tricks - only "psychological experiments" in which he surpassed all competitors.

Messing spent several years on foreign tours: Japan, Brazil, Argentina. And then he returned to Poland. Here's his first thing taken to the army... The puny private, unable to shoot and march, was assigned to the kitchen. They took him straight from the kitchen to the palace of the "chief of Poland" - Marshal Pilsudski, intrigued by the amazing "tricks" that his subordinates told him about. Later, the marshal consulted with Wolf more than once on a variety of issues. For example, about the denouement of his romance with the beautiful Evgenia Levitskaya. Messing did not hide that the life of a young woman is in danger. And so it happened: soon Levitskaya, having lost hope of uniting with a loved one (Pilsudski was married), committed suicide.

Wolf Messing still traveled a lot - even visited India, where he visited the spiritual leader of the Hindus, Mahatma Gandhi, and learned a lot from the yogis. He not only performed from the stage, but also solved intricate criminal riddles. Once Count Czartoryski lost a diamond brooch that cost a fortune. He called Messing to him. He asked to see all the inhabitants of the castle in front of him and quickly found the culprit - the idiot son of the servant. The boy pulled off the shiny thing and hid it in the mouth of a stuffed bear in the living room. Messing refused the award, asking instead the count to help in repealing the law that infringed on the rights of Jews. Czartoryski pressed the necessary levers in the Diet, and the law was canceled.
Such stories multiplied the glory of the sorcerer, but incidents also happened. In one town, Messing was shown a letter from a guy who had left for America, from whom there had been no news for a long time. The mother wanted the "seer" to determine what was wrong with her son on a piece of paper. After reading the letter, he frowned: "Pani, I do not want to upset you, but the one who wrote this letter is dead ..."

The ladies were barely pumped out ... And during the next visit to the town of Messinga, they were greeted with shouts of “Swindler! Scoundrel! " It turned out that the imaginary dead had recently returned home. Messing pondered. "Did you write the letter yourself?" He asked the guy. “No, I’m not good with literacy,” he was embarrassed. - I dictated, and my friend wrote. Poor fellow, he was soon crushed by a log. " The sorcerer's authority was restored.

Touring the trails have brought Wolf Messing to Berlin more than once where another seer bathed in the rays of glory - Eric Jan Ganussen. Also a Jew, he renounced his people and went into the service of the Nazis, becoming Hitler's personal astrologer. Messing recognized his talent, but believed that Hanussen often used cheap effects, influencing the audience through hypnosis. Hanussen, on the other hand, hated a competitor and instilled in the Fuhrer a superstitious fear of Messing. However, Hitler was afraid of Hanussen himself, who read his secret thoughts: after coming to power in 1933, he ordered to "remove" the astrologer.
In Poland itself, Messing also had many ill-wishers. One of them sent a beautiful lady to the sorcerer, who began to openly seduce him. Wolf, who guessed her plan, quietly called the police. When the stranger jumped out onto the stairs shouting "Help, they are rape!", The guards with handcuffs were already waiting for her there.

At the same time, Messing was not a misogynist. On his tours, he often had novels, then married an artist, had children... Their further fate is unknown - they, like Messing's youth, remained in that half of his life that was cut off by the war.

Fuehrer's hatred

In September 1939, armada of Nazi tanks slammed into Poland like a wedge. The massacres of the Jews began immediately. They were herded into the ghetto, and from there they were sent to death camps. This mournful path went all Gura-Kalwaria, including the father and brothers Messing. They died in the gas chambers of Majdanek. Admirers of his talent hid the fortuneteller himself in Warsaw, in the basement of a butcher's shop. Two years before Messing at one speech predicted the death of Hitler if he sent troops east. Now the "enemy of the Reich" was looking for the Gestapo. A reward was promised for his head - two hundred thousand Reichsmarks. Like many susceptible people, Messing suffered from a fear of confined spaces. After being locked up for several days, he went out into the street - and was immediately captured by a patrol. Wolf tried to convince the soldiers that he was an artist (long hair, clothes stained with chalk), but was hit in the face with a rifle butt and woke up in prison. “Well, hello, Jewish magician! - the warden grinned. "Berlin has already been tired of waiting for you."

Messing foresaw how it would all end. He will be forced to make predictions, and then removed, like Hanussen. Gathering all his will into a fist, he hypnotized the guards and locked them in his cell. But the exit is also being guarded, and there is no longer any strength left ... Messing jumped from the second floor (permanently injuring his legs) and limped off to the outskirts. There he persuaded a passing peasant to hide him in a cart under the hay. Then other people helped him - some for money, some out of respect for his talent. Dark November Night 1939 a fishing boat transported him across the Bug to the Soviet Union... The country, where he had never been before, was now supposed to be his home.

Meetings with Stalin

And again the oddities began. Any fugitive from abroad then faced long checks, the almost inevitable accusation of espionage, and then execution or camps. A Messing was immediately allowed to travel freely around the country and perform with their experiences. He himself rather unconvincingly explained that he had instilled in some rank the idea of his usefulness for the authorities, one of the tasks of which was the inculcation of materialism.

"In the Soviet Union, fighting against superstitions in the minds of people, they did not favor fortune-tellers, wizards, or palmists ... I had to convince, demonstrate my abilities a thousand times," Messing later expounded his version.

And yet it is more likely that the fate of the sorcerer was so successful in the USSR only because some high-ranking and very competent people knew about him for a long time.

This was confirmed six months later, when people in uniform took Messing away from the stage, put him on a plane and took him to Moscow. There he was supposedly met by a short mustachioed man, familiar to the entire population of the USSR from countless portraits.

“Hello, Comrade Stalin,” Messing said. - And I carried you in my arms "" - "How is it on my arms?" - the leader was surprised. - “On the first of May, at the demonstration.” After talking with Messing, Stalin said: “Well, you are a sly one!” To which the sorcerer seemed to answer: "What are you! Here you are - so really cunning!"

Oddly enough, such an unthinkable familiarity got away with the recent emigrant. But Stalin still arranged checks on him- ordered to get one hundred thousand rubles from the savings bank on a clean sheet of paper. Messing succeeded brilliantly (and the cashier later fell down with a heart attack).

Another time, the "father of nations" suggested that Wolf Grigorievich (as Messing was called in the USSR) to go to his carefully guarded dacha in Kuntsevo. The sorcerer acted in a simple and logical Soviet way: he convinced the guards that he was the almighty head of the NKVD, Beria. And they let him through all the cordons.

What is true here, what is not? But such stories, which were whispered about in the "near-Kremlin" families in Moscow, gave rise to the legend that Wolf Messing was almost Stalin's personal predictor and advisor. In fact, they only met a few times. It is unlikely that the "Kremlin highlander" would like that someone - even in the order of psychological experience - can read his thoughts ...

Messing in the USSR almost suffered the fate of Hanussen. Evacuated to Tashkent during the war, he spent two weeks in the hot dungeons of the local NKVD. They say that because he did not want to give money for the construction of a military aircraft. But this is hard to believe. He was never greedy and even before the prison gave the front an airplane, and after it a second. By the way, the famous ace Konstantin Kovalev, who became Messing's friend after the war, flew on one of them. It seems that Beria's people were trying to get something else from Wolf Grigorievich - to teach them mind control techniques... Whether he agreed or not is unknown, but the "conveyor belt" of interrogations did the trick. The daredevil who joked with Stalin himself came out of prison as a broken, forever intimidated, instantly aged man.

Messing's life after the war looks by contrast quiet and poor in events. The authorities allocated him a one-room apartment in Moscow, on Novopeschanaya Street, where the fortuneteller settled with his wife Aida Mikhailovna. They met in Novosibirsk during the war, and Aida became everything for Messing - a friend, a secretary, an assistant. With her, the eternal wanderer found his home for the first time, where he could throw off his mask and become himself. But only a few friends saw him like that, as for selection, extraordinary people.

One of them, Mikhail Mikhalkov (brother of Sergei Mikhalkov) Messing explained: “Each person has, say, 20 percent intuition, that is, a sense of self-preservation. You, a person who fought, have developed intuition for 100 percent, for someone it is for 300, and for me - a thousand percent! "

Messing kept the daily routine... I got up at eight o'clock, did exercises, then sat down to breakfast, always the same - coffee with milk, black bread, soft-boiled egg. I walked for a long time with my two dogs. I read a lot, especially science fiction and books on psychology. Before work, he usually slept for about thirty minutes (he said that sleep energizes him). He was cowardly, afraid of lightning, cars and people in uniform.

He obeyed his wife in everything and only sometimes, when it came to matters of principle, did he menacingly straighten himself up and utter in a different voice, sharp and squeaky: "This is not Volfochka speaking to you, but Messing!"
In the same imperious voice, he spoke on stage. In combination with a big name and extraordinary appearance, this added to his success.

Having lived for many years in the Soviet Union, he did not did not master the Russian language perfectly, which more than once led to funny situations. Once, when some lady at a performance refused to give him her thing for the experiment, Messing was indignant: “Why don't you? Women have always given me! " And I could not understand why the audience burst into laughter. And when they said to him: "You are working great!" - answered with dignity: "Yes, I'm healthy, I'm not sick!"

He not only did not get sick, but also knew how to heal others with the help of hypnosis. a. However, he could not help his wife. She died of cancer in 1960. Having lost Aida Mikhailovna, Messing did not appear on stage for six months, but then returned to work. He traveled all over the country, from the Carpathians to the Uzbek villages and temporary houses of the builders of Bratsk. He always performed with similar numbers: he asked the audience to hide all kinds of objects in the hall and found them, instantly counted matches scattered on the floor, answered tricky questions. But most often he performed tasks that the audience gave him mentally. For example, this: take off the glasses from the nose of the lady sitting in the sixth place of the thirteenth row, take them to the stage and put them in the glass with the right glass down.

Wolf Messing successfully completed such tasks without using leading remarks or hints from assistants. Official science could not explain this then, and did not try very hard. In the 1970s, a real boom in parapsychology began, enthusiasts began to investigate all "telepaths", but for some reason no one attracted Messing to such experiments. Is it because they did not see much of a mystery in his experiments- just perfected susceptibility to the so-called ideomotor? The fact is that, conceiving a task and entering into a mental dialogue with another person, we imperceptibly for ourselves with barely perceptible movements of the arms, torso, eyes "lead" him, "prompt" what needs to be done. Most likely, this is how any student psychologist today will explain Messing's experiments. But there is another explanation.: all these years the sorcerer remained under the invisible "cap" of the special services. It is no coincidence that after his death, all of his papers disappeared along with a large diamond ring - a talisman that he wore during performances. Messing hinted to friends about some tasks of "important persons" that he performed. Alas, nothing is known specifically about this. If the documents remain, they are buried in closed archives.

In recent years, Messing was seriously ill. He stopped speaking, fearing that the overwhelming burden of other people's thoughts would destroy his brain. However, the disease crept up on the other side - the vessels on the once crippled legs refused. Leaving for the hospital, he looked at his photo on the wall and said: "Okay, Wolf, you won't come back here again." And so it happened: the operation was successful, but suddenly the kidneys failed, then the lungs. Wolf Messing died on November 8, 1974.

“… None of my abilities provide any particular advantage. Unless, of course, their owner is an honest person and is not going to use his skill for personal gain, deception, crime. But even in this case he will not achieve success, because in the end he will be discovered and, simply put, punished ... Absolutely! So don't be jealous! "

The state did not give generosity to the monument to the sorcerer of the Land of the Soviets, and fifteen years later Messing's friends installed it at their own expense.

according to close people, he knew about the cause of death, the date and even the hour of his death several years before his death;
in 1953, Messing predicted Stalin's death to the leader himself, when he came to Stalin with requests to stop the persecution of Jews. Messing predicted that Stalin would die on a Jewish holiday, which actually happened.
Wolf Messing became the prototype of one of the characters in the book "Choice", written by Viktor Suvorov, the literary character was named Rudolf Messer;
according to some sources Bulgakov in his novel The Master and Margarita called Satan "Messire Woland" because of the consonance with "Messing Wolf". Perhaps it was Messing's famous experiment at the cash desk of the State Bank that prompted Bulgakov to the episode with the banknotes;
journalism repeatedly mentions Messing's participation in solving various crimes (capturing a spy, pointing out the true killer during the trial, etc.). As the research of N.N. Kitaev has shown, almost all such stories are unreliable: in the archives, Messing's participation in the investigation of cases is not indicated, and the personnel of the court and prosecutor's office who worked in the places of the alleged events unanimously claim that nothing of the kind actually happened. are the events of June 1974 in Irkutsk. During the investigation of the case of the director of the fruit and vegetable store, accused of large-scale embezzlement, Messing was present at his interrogation and on the same day the representative of the BCHSS acquainted the investigator with the "certificate", allegedly drawn up after a conversation with Messing. The certificate indicated previously unknown facts that exposed the accused. The certificate was filed into a secret file of operational accounting, the information was checked and confirmed. However, as it turned out later, in such a non-standard way the investigator legalized undercover information, not wanting to disclose its true source;
Nikolay Kitaev in his brochure “Criminalistic psychic. Wolf Messing: Truth and Fiction "claims that Messing's" memoirs "were fabricated by the famous journalist-popularizer, head of the science department of" Komsomolskaya Pravda "Mikhail Vasilyevich Khvastunov. The fact that Messing's book “I Am a Telepath” was actually written by Mikhail Khvastunov, as well as that what is written in it is fiction, was confirmed by scientific writer and journalist Vladimir Gubarev (former scientific editor of Komsomolskaya Pravda). reading ideomotor acts, V.S.Matveev noted that when he met him, Messing refused to demonstrate the skill of hypnosis or any other trick described in his memoirs. According to psychiatrist Mikhail Buyanov, in the last years of his life, Wolf Messing turned to him for medical help, suffering from many phobias.

Verification of the biography of Wolf Grigorievich Messing:

In 1965, in the journal Science and Religion (numbers from 7 to 11), Messing's "memoirs" were published, fragments of which were also published in Smena, Sovetskaya Rossiya and a number of other publications. Attempts to verify the artist's most sensational statements have shown their unreliability.

Messing claimed that in 1915, when he was 16, he met with Einstein at his apartment in Vienna, where he was struck by the abundance of books, and held a telepathic session with Einstein and Freud. However, it is known for certain that Einstein did not have an apartment at all in Vienna, and from 1913 to 1925 he did not visit Vienna. Moreover, Einstein always kept in his apartments only a few reference books and reprints of the most important articles;
Messing claimed that when the German army occupied Poland, his head was estimated at 200 thousand marks, since he predicted the death of Hitler in one of the theaters in Warsaw if he turned to the east. He was allegedly captured and taken to the police station, from where he allegedly escaped using his supernatural powers. However, there is no evidence for such high-profile claims;
During the inspection of 857 collections of trophy documents in the Russian State Military Archives (archives of the Imperial Chancellery, ministries, secret police departments, state security departments, personal funds of Nazi leaders), no information was found about the artist Wolf Messing. A similar result was obtained by checking the catalog of the Berlin Library. No no documents have been found about Hitler's reaction to Messing's public speeches;
In the magazines of the interwar period of Poland, writing on the themes of secret knowledge, parapsychology and occultism ("Obeim", "Sunflowers", "World of Spirit", "World of the Supersensible", "Spiritual Knowledge", "Light"), no mention of Wolf Messing was found ( unlike other hypnotists and clairvoyants). In the reference book “Bibliography of Warsaw. Editions for 1921-1939. " not a single article dedicated to Messing is indicated. In the book by Jozef Svitkovsky "Occultism and Magic in the Light of Parapsychology" ("Lotus", Lvov, 1939 / Krakow, 1990), the surname Messing does not occur. In SonderfahndungsbuchPolen, (A Detailed Book of Surveillance in Poland), published by the Criminal Police in June 1940, Messing does not appear;
Messing allegedly met in 1940 in Gomel with Stalin, who was allegedly "interested in the situation in Poland, Messing's meetings with the leaders of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth." Similar meetings with Stalin allegedly took place later, including in Moscow. Such an interest of the head of state in a fugitive pop telepath, far from politics, is highly doubtful. In addition, there are no documents confirming such meetings of Stalin with Messing, in the Central Archives of the FSB of the Russian Federation, the archive of the Central Committee of the CPSU (now the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History), in the Central Archive of the KGB of the Republic of Belarus, in the National Archives of the Republic of Belarus, State archives of Georgia, the party archive of Georgia (now - the archive of the President of Georgia), in the records of persons received by Stalin in the Kremlin (published in the journal "Historical Archive": 1994, No. 6; 1995, No. 2,3,4,5-6; 1996, No. 2,3,4,5-6; 1997, No. 1), in the notebooks of visitors to Stalin's office from 1927 to 1953;
Messing claimed that at Stalin's request, having hypnotized the cashier of the State Bank, he handed him an empty sheet and received 100,000 rubles from him. But at that time, the procedure for issuing money in the State Bank was completely different: the check is served to an accountant who has no money. Then this document goes through the internal channels of the bank, is carefully checked by an auditor (or two auditors, if the amount is large), then the check goes to the cashier, who prepares documents and money and after all this calls the client.

In September 1899 in Poland. From his youth, Wolf Grigorievich participated in the numbers together with the illusionists. Later he mastered pop telepathy (the ability to think through the hand).

Messing's faithful companion and assistant was Aida Mikhailovna Messing-Rapoport, who was from until her death.

No reliable evidence of Messing's genius has been found, his adventures are considered nothing more than a talented hoax.

Miracle or talented bluff

Einstein and Freud admired the name of Messing, Stalin reckoned with his opinion, and, they say, Hitler was afraid of him, who wanted to get the head of this man, since Wolf Messing inadvertently predicted his fate in the event of a war between Germany and the USSR.

Stalin more than once invited Messing to himself in order to personally verify his abilities. One day, the leader ordered Messing to come to the Kremlin, while forbidding anyone from the guards and his immediate entourage to let the Pole through. Nevertheless, with the help of his hypnotic abilities, Messing easily came to Stalin, which greatly surprised the leader, moreover, he also left the walls of the Kremlin, passing by the guards raised on alarm.

Road to death

Messing lived for over 75 years. Attempts were made on him more than once, since some politicians, both Soviet and foreign, were sincerely afraid of the Soviet predictor.

During the Second World War, Wolf Grigorievich injured both legs. Messingu underwent a series of operations on the hips, after which she was on the iliac arteries, which, according to medical reports, was successful and ended with the patient's recovery. Nevertheless, despite successful operations, Wolf Grigorievich Messing died on 8 1974 as a result of pulmonary edema and complete renal failure. It is still unclear what caused the sharp deterioration in Wolf Grigorievich's health. Someone believes that they deliberately wanted to kill him, someone believes that everything is due to the rather big age of the telepath.

The biography of Wolf Messing begins with his birth into a Jewish family on September 10, 1899 in Poland, which at that time was part of the Russian Empire. He is considered one of the most mysterious figures of the past century, many legends are associated with his name, some of them say that Stalin took part in the fate of Messing, and Hitler considered Messing his personal enemy.

Wolf Messing is called a telepathic, hypnotist, clairvoyant, he was a student of the famous Dr. Abel and Freud. He knew how to subjugate people to his will, predict the future and unravel complex crimes, even predict important events in history. He predicted Hitler's death if he sent his army to the East. He could, with the touch of his hand, cure a disease that was beyond the power of medicine. Messing was able to change the fate of many people. His abilities were confirmed by thousands of people who saw his gift on stage and came into contact with him, Messing himself called this gift his curse.

When Wolf Messing's abilities were revealed

His unique abilities were manifested in his childhood. Aged six. For the father, it was a dream that his son would become a rabbi. But the boy himself was not attracted to a spiritual career, and he ran away from home and got on a train to Berlin. Since there was no money for a ticket, he hid from the conductor under the bench. But the meeting could not be avoided. While checking tickets, Wolf, picking up a piece of paper from the floor, and wishing that this piece of paper turned out to be a railway ticket, he handed it to the inspector. The inspector took the piece of paper, punched it and said, why are you sitting there under the bench? So Messing discovered his talent for suggestion. And Messing, a boy from a deeply religious Jewish family, was sent to primary school at the synagogue. Here children memorized prayers from the Talmud - the holy book of the Jews. Already at that time, the young Wolf showed a unique ability to memorize rather difficult texts. And then the parents decided to send the boy to study further - to an institution for spiritual ministers.

In Berlin, he was able to get a job as a messenger in the House for Visitors, doing various jobs: washing dishes, carrying heavy suitcases, cleaning shoes. One day, right in the middle of the street, he fainted in hunger. When the boy was taken to the hospital, the doctors did not find the patient's pulse and he was sent to the morgue. There, some trainee accidentally noticed that the heart was beating barely audibly. Wolf regained consciousness only on the third day, he fell into the hands of a psychiatrist and neuropathologist Abel, who began to study a phenomenal child who could control his body - stopping the beating of his heart.

Wolf Messing's acquaintance with outstanding people

Abel introduced Messing to Herr Zelmeister, who invited Wolf to the Berlin freak show. Where Messigne lay in a crystal coffin, plunging himself into a cataleptic state for three days. For this he received five marks a day, which was a lot of money in those days. Gradually, he became a real artist: he surprised the audience with his immunity to physical pain, mastered the ability to read minds. The young man quickly gained popularity, became fashionable, and got the opportunity to meet outstanding people. So in 1915 there was a meeting with Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein.

Why Hitler was hunting for Messing

At one of the performances in 1937 in Warsaw, he publicly predicted the death of Hitler if he decided to turn his army to the East. For this prediction, a reward of 200,000 marks was announced for Messing's head. They searched for him for a long time and found him. First, Messing was beaten, and then sent to a punishment cell. His further fate was clear: Messing had to die there, like his entire family. But from death, he was saved by a hypnotic skill.

Wolf Messing mentally sent an order to all the servicemen of the punishment cell to come to his cell. First came the guards, then everyone else, together with the head of the site. Messing just left the cell, locking the door behind him, and walked away. He secretly moved to the other side of the Western Bug River and ended up on Soviet territory. At first, it was difficult for him, he did not know Russian well and no one here heard about his abilities. But he managed to get into the concert brigade, which served the area in the vicinity of Brest. His "psychological experiments" quickly gained popularity, and in May 1940 Messing went on tour to Minsk and throughout Belarus.

During World War II, Messing lived in Novosibirsk. After the end of the war he lived in Moscow, toured the Soviet Union a lot. Wolf Messing died on November 8, 1974, after a long illness. Buried in Moscow at the Vostryakovskoye cemetery.

Outcomes

Friends, readers and guests of the blog site today we reviewed the biography of Wolf Messing, a man who possessed superpowers, which gave him both popularity and serious tests. He could pass Stalin's bodyguards, enter the bank of the USSR with a suitcase of papers and cash out at the cashier, who saw them as a suitcase of money. He is also a person who suffered from unbearable pains in his legs for the last decades of his life and who, with the power of his WILL and thought, subdued this pain, going out to his performances.

At the end of 1939, a man crossed the Soviet border from Poland. He told the border guards that he was an artist and fled from the Nazis. He was brought to the culture department of the Brest City Executive Committee to see Comrade Abrasimov, who, looking at the overgrown and thin man, asked: "What an artist, we understand, but in what field of art do you work?"

Then the man took a sewing needle from the table and offered to stick the needle into any of the flowers standing in a bouquet on the table, he went out the door himself, after a while he returned and asked the official to give him his hand. Pyotr Abrasimov said: "He took me by the hand, walked around the table, led me to the bouquet and pulled an invisible needle out of the flower."

Messing Wolf is a telepath, hypnotist, clairvoyant, a student of Freud and the famous Dr. Abel. He was able not only to subjugate people to his will, to unravel complex crimes, but also to predict the future, including the greatest events in history. It was he who predicted Hitler's death if he moved his troops to the East. Wolf Messing is truly a man of mystery. To say a hypnotist about him is to say nothing. He could heal a disease with the touch of his hands, before which medicine was powerless. He changed the fate of many people, including Stalin's son, whom he saved from death.

Wolf was a strange boy. When he was four years old, his mother noticed that he was walking in a dream. Clever people advised to put a basin of cold water by his bed - stepping into it, the boy woke up. In the end, he was cured of sleepwalking. Around the same time, it was discovered that nature had endowed Wolf with a phenomenal memory. He easily memorized entire pages from the Talmud.

When he woke up, he obediently trudged off to a yeshiva - a spiritual school. Maybe the world would have gotten an extraordinary Rabbi Messing someday, but two years later a hefty bearded man came to their house on business. And Wolf immediately recognized him as a terrible stranger. His father deceived him!
On that day, eleven-year-old Wolf committed three serious offenses at once. He secretly left his parents' house, stole money from a donation cup hanging in front of the synagogue (there were only nine kopecks there), and got on the first train that came across.

Huddled under the bench, he stared in horror at the controller walking towards him.
"Hey boy, show me your ticket!" - this voice will sound in Messing's ears for many years to come. Grabbing a dirty piece of newspaper from the floor, he thrust it to the controller, passionately, with all his heart, wanting everything to work out somehow. Several painful moments passed, and the controller's face softened: “Well Are you sitting under the bench with your ticket? Get out, you fool! "

So the boy realized for the first time that he possessed some kind of incomprehensible power. Later, some of Messing's biographers told this story differently. As if, on his silent order, the controller jumped out of the train and crashed to death. Any event in Messing's life has become overgrown with legends, which today are almost impossible to understand.

The biographers were not helped either by his memoirs "About Himself", published in the mid-1960s in several Soviet journals at once. The science fiction writer Mikhail Vasiliev, who wrote them down, also worked hard, decorating the biography of his hero with incredible details. Was it worth the trouble? Wolf Messing's life looks amazing even without any embellishments.

The train took him to Berlin, a huge city where no one was waiting for the little Jewish tramp. Wolf delivered things, washed dishes, cleaned shoes - and was constantly desperately hungry. Finally he collapsed in the street unconscious. He was almost sent to the morgue - a weak heartbeat was heard only at the last moment. A unique patient, who lay in a deep swoon for three days, was admitted to the clinic of the famous psychiatrist Abel. Opening his eyes, the boy said: "Don't take me to an orphanage!" The doctor was amazed - he was just thinking about it ...

The impresario Zelmeister became interested in the "miracle child." He arranged for Wolff in the circus. Now the boy spent three days a week in a crystal coffin, plunging himself into a state of catalepsy for the amusement of the public - something like a faint, accompanied by complete numbness of the body. with other numbers - he pierced his neck with a steel needle, looked for things hidden by the audience.The rest of the time Wolf devoted to his education - talked about psychology with the best specialists of that time, read a lot.

Now on the streets he tried to "eavesdrop" on the thoughts of passers-by. Checking himself, he approached the milkmaid and said something like: "Don't worry, your daughter will not forget to milk the goat." And the shop assistant reassured him: "The debt will be returned to you soon." The amazed exclamations of the "test subjects" indicated that the boy really managed to read other people's thoughts.

In 1915, the young telepathist came on tour to Vienna. Here they became interested in two giants of science of the 20th century - the founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud and the brilliant physicist Albert Einstein. During the demonstration session, fulfilling Freud's mental task, Messing approached Einstein and pulled out three hairs from his luxurious mustache with tweezers. Since then, he has met Freud more than once. Alas, these meetings left no trace in any of the works of the Viennese psychoanalyst. Perhaps Freud simply retreated before a phenomenon that he could not explain in any way. But it was thanks to Freud that Wolf parted with the circus, deciding: no more cheap tricks - only "psychological experiments" in which he surpassed all competitors.

Messing spent several years on foreign tours: Japan, Brazil, Argentina. And then he returned to Poland. Here he was first taken into the army. The puny private, unable to shoot and march, was assigned to the kitchen. They took him straight from the kitchen to the palace of the "chief of Poland" - Marshal Pilsudski, intrigued by the amazing "tricks" that his subordinates told him about. Later, the marshal consulted with Wolf more than once on a variety of issues. For example, about the denouement of his romance with the beautiful Evgenia Levitskaya. Messing did not hide that the life of a young woman is in danger. And so it happened: soon Levitskaya, having lost hope of uniting with a loved one (Pilsudski was married), committed suicide.

Messing still traveled a lot - even visited India, where he visited the spiritual leader of the Hindus, Mahatma Gandhi, and learned a lot from the yogis. He not only performed from the stage, but also solved intricate criminal riddles. Once Count Czartoryski lost a diamond brooch that cost a fortune. He called Messing to him. He asked to see all the inhabitants of the castle in front of him and quickly found the culprit - the idiot son of the servant. The boy pulled off the shiny thing and hid it in the mouth of a stuffed bear in the living room. Messing refused the award, asking instead the count to help in repealing the law that infringed on the rights of Jews. Czartoryski pressed the necessary levers in the Diet, and the law was canceled.

Such stories multiplied the glory of the sorcerer, but incidents also happened. In one town, Messing was shown a letter from a guy who had left for America, from whom there had been no news for a long time. The mother wanted the "seer" to determine what was wrong with her son on a piece of paper. After reading the letter, he frowned: "Pani, I do not want to upset you, but the one who wrote this letter is dead ..."

The ladies were barely pumped out ... And during the next visit to the town of Messing, they were greeted with shouts of “Swindler! Scoundrel! " It turned out that the imaginary dead had recently returned home. Messing pondered. "Did you write the letter yourself?" He asked the guy. “No, I’m not good with literacy,” he was embarrassed. - I dictated, and my friend wrote. Poor fellow, he was soon crushed by a log. " The sorcerer's authority was restored.

The touring paths more than once brought Wolf Messing to Berlin, where another seer, Eric Jan Hanussen, bathed in the rays of glory. Also a Jew, he renounced his people and went into the service of the Nazis, becoming Hitler's personal astrologer. Messing recognized his talent, but believed that Hanussen often used cheap effects, influencing the audience through hypnosis. Hanussen, on the other hand, hated a competitor and instilled in the Fuhrer a superstitious fear of Messing. However, Hitler was afraid of Hanussen himself, who read his secret thoughts: after coming to power in 1933, he ordered to "remove" the astrologer.

In Poland itself, Messing also had many ill-wishers. One of them sent a beautiful lady to the sorcerer, who began to openly seduce him. Wolf, who guessed her plan, quietly called the police. When the stranger jumped out onto the stairs shouting "Help, they are rape!", The guards with handcuffs were already waiting for her there.

At the same time, Messing was not a misogynist. On his tours, he repeatedly started novels, then married an artist, had children. Their further fate is unknown - they, like Messing's youth, remained in that half of his life that was cut off by the war.

In September 1939, armada of Nazi tanks slammed into Poland like a wedge. The massacres of the Jews began immediately. They were herded into the ghetto, and from there they were sent to death camps. This mournful path went all Gura-Kalwaria, including the father and brothers Messing. They died in the gas chambers of Majdanek. Admirers of his talent hid the fortuneteller himself in Warsaw, in the basement of a butcher's shop. Two years earlier, Messing, in one speech, predicted the death of Hitler if he sent troops to the east. Now the "enemy of the Reich" was looking for the Gestapo. A reward was promised for his head - two hundred thousand Reichsmarks. Like many susceptible people, Messing suffered from a fear of confined spaces. After being locked up for several days, he went out into the street - and was immediately captured by a patrol. Wolf tried to convince the soldiers that he was an artist (long hair, clothes stained with chalk), but was hit in the face with a rifle butt and woke up in prison. “Well, hello, Jewish magician! - the warden grinned. "Berlin has already been tired of waiting for you."

Messing foresaw how it would all end. He will be forced to make predictions, and then removed, like Hanussen. Gathering all his will into a fist, he hypnotized the guards and locked them in his cell. But the exit is also being guarded, and there is no more strength left ... Messing jumped from the second floor (permanently injuring his legs) and limped off to the outskirts. There he persuaded a passing peasant to hide him in a cart under the hay. Then other people helped him - some for money, some out of respect for his talent. On a dark November night in 1939, a fishing boat transported him across the Bug to the Soviet Union. The country, where he had never been before, was now supposed to be his home.

And again the oddities began. Any fugitive from abroad then faced long checks, the almost inevitable accusation of espionage, and then execution or camps. And Messing was immediately allowed to travel freely around the country and perform with his experiments. He himself rather unconvincingly explained that he had instilled in some rank the idea of his usefulness for the authorities, one of the tasks of which was the inculcation of materialism.

"In the Soviet Union, fighting against superstitions in the minds of people, they did not favor fortune-tellers, wizards, or palmists ... I had to persuade, demonstrate my abilities a thousand times," - this is how Messing later expounded his version. the fate of the sorcerer was so successful in the USSR only because some high-ranking and very competent people knew about him for a long time.

"Hello, Comrade Stalin, - said Messing. - And I carried you in my arms" "-" How is it on my arms? " - the leader was surprised. - "May Day, at the demonstration." After talking with Messing, Stalin said: "Well, you are a sly one!" To which the sorcerer allegedly replied: “What are you talking about! Here you are - so really sly! "

Oddly enough, such an unthinkable familiarity got away with the recent emigrant. But Stalin nevertheless arranged checks for him - he ordered him to receive one hundred thousand rubles from the savings bank on a clean sheet of paper. Messing succeeded brilliantly (and the cashier later fell down with a heart attack).

Having proved his abilities, Messing received the right to continue performing, however, without observing political caution, he often found himself in dangerous situations. So, after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, all Soviet people had to believe in the indestructible friendship of two socialist states: Nazi Germany and Bolshevik Russia, and the entire Soviet press glorified the wisdom of Stalin, who prevented the war. It was in this tortured-optimistic atmosphere that Wolf, speaking at the NKVD club, received a note with the question "What do you think about the Soviet-German pact?"

His words had the effect of an exploding bomb: "How, to doubt the wisdom of Stalin?" For less they were shot without trial or investigation. But the dictator decided to check the prediction - he ordered to wait. For the time being, Messing's speeches were stopped, the posters with his name disappeared on June 22, 1941, and Messing's prophecy, although partially, came true: the pact was violated, Germany attacked the Soviet Union. Wolf Grigorievich was "forgiven", returned to the stage, and often went to the front with concert crews. With the money he earned, he built and donated two combat aircraft to the pilots: the first in 1942, the second in 1944.

In Novosibirsk, answering the question when the war will end, he said. “May 8th,” but did not name the year. Stalin closely followed Messing's prophecies and, when the act of Germany's surrender was signed, sent him a telegram, noting the accuracy of the date. Throughout the post-war years, Wolf Grigorievich spoke in front of people, but according to the approved program, everything that did not fit into the materialist dialectic was withdrawn. The Honored Artist of the RSFSR himself explained his capabilities simply “My subconscious mind was connected with“ something ”or with“ someone ”. And so it all happened ... ".

Messing's life after the war looks in contrast to be quiet and poor in events. The authorities allocated him a one-room apartment in Moscow, on Novopeschanaya Street, where the fortuneteller settled with his wife Aida Mikhailovna. They met in Novosibirsk during the war, and Aida became everything for Messing - a friend, a secretary, an assistant. With her, the eternal wanderer found his home for the first time, where he could throw off his mask and become himself. But only a few friends saw him like that, as for selection, extraordinary people.

Messing followed the daily routine. I got up at eight o'clock, did exercises, then sat down to breakfast, always the same - coffee with milk, black bread, soft-boiled egg. I walked for a long time with my two dogs. I read a lot, especially science fiction and books on psychology. Before work, he usually slept for about thirty minutes (he said that sleep energizes him). He was cowardly, afraid of lightning, cars and people in uniform.

Having lived for many years in the Soviet Union, he never perfectly mastered the Russian language, which more than once led to funny situations. Once, when some lady at a performance refused to give him her thing for the experiment, Messing was indignant: “Why don't you give it? Women have always given me! " And I could not understand why the audience burst into laughter. And when they said to him: "You are working great!" - answered with dignity: "Yes, I am healthy, I am not sick!"

He not only did not get sick, but also knew how to heal others with the help of hypnosis. However, he could not help his wife. She died of cancer in 1960. Having lost Aida Mikhailovna, Messing did not appear on stage for six months, but then returned to work. He traveled all over the country, from the Carpathians to the Uzbek villages and temporary houses of the builders of Bratsk. He always performed with similar numbers: he asked the audience to hide all kinds of objects in the hall and found them, instantly counted matches scattered on the floor, answered tricky questions. But most often he performed tasks that the audience gave him mentally. For example, this: take off the glasses from the nose of the lady sitting in the sixth place of the thirteenth row, take them to the stage and put them in the glass with the right glass down.

Messing successfully completed such tasks without using leading remarks or hints from assistants. Official science could not explain this then, and did not try very hard. In the 1970s, a real boom in parapsychology began, enthusiasts began to investigate all "telepaths", but for some reason no one attracted Messing to such experiments. Is it because in his experiments they did not see a special mystery - only a perfected susceptibility to the so-called ideomotor? The fact is that, conceiving a task and entering into a mental dialogue with another person, we imperceptibly for ourselves with barely perceptible movements of the arms, torso, eyes "lead" him, "prompt" what needs to be done. Most likely, this is how any student psychologist today will explain Messing's experiments. But there is another explanation: all these years the sorcerer remained under the invisible "cap" of the special services. It is no coincidence that after his death, all of his papers disappeared along with a large diamond ring - a talisman that he wore during performances. Messing hinted to friends about some tasks of "important persons" that he performed. Alas, nothing is known specifically about this. If the documents remain, they are buried in closed archives.

In recent years, Messing was seriously ill. He stopped speaking, fearing that the overwhelming burden of other people's thoughts would destroy his brain. However, the disease crept up on the other side - the vessels on the once crippled legs refused. He could not hide either fear or despair. He tried to hope - not in God, in doctors. He begged the Soviet government to allow him to summon the already famous DeBakey at his own expense (which, of course, was refused). Leaving for the hospital, he looked at his photo on the wall and said: "Okay, Wolf, you won't come back here again." And so it happened: the operation was successful, but suddenly the kidneys failed, then the lungs. Wolf Messing died on November 8, 1974.

Wolf Grigorievich was buried next to his wife at the Vostryakovskoye cemetery in Moscow.
The state did not give generosity to the monument to the sorcerer of the Land of the Soviets, and fifteen years later Messing's friends installed it at their own expense.

“... None of my abilities provide any particular advantage. Unless, of course, their owner is an honest person and is not going to use his skill for personal gain, deception, crime. But even in this case, he will not achieve success, because in the end he will be discovered and, simply put, punished ... Absolutely! So don't be jealous! "

Even Freud, who immortalized his name by studying the human psyche, could not explain the phenomenon of Messing. Although Messing himself has repeatedly emphasized that there is nothing supernatural in his phenomenon. He did not even read the thoughts - he saw them: "It is very difficult to be a mystery to oneself. People only go to telepathy. The fact is that everyone has such abilities, only in varying degrees and they need to be developed. It's like musical talent. Many can play various instruments, but only a few are virtuoso. "

Messing had no patrons or teachers. He once jokingly said: I have nothing to do but believe in my talisman - a diamond ring. Once the ring was stolen. Messing was very upset. Friends consoled: there will be, with your abilities. He replied that this was not the point; he knew who had stolen it. But there is no proof. Literally a week later, in 1975, Messing died.

When Messing died, Soviet doctors, Academician L. Badalyan said, carefully studied his brain, trying to uncover the secret of the great predictor. They were disappointed - nothing special was found. The brain is like a brain. The secrets of an amazing phenomenon, unsolved to this day, Wolf Messing took to the grave.

If you, dear reader, have ever read books and articles devoted to the creative path of the unique psychic Messing, and these books are still preserved in your home, then you can go, collect them and throw them into the trash. (Except for VL Strongin's book "The Fate of the Prophet", publishing house "AST Press". By the way, thanks to "AST Press" for the photographs for the article.) At least there will be less junk on the bookshelves for dust accumulation - direct health benefits, both physical and mental. All the official stories of Messing are pure nonsense.

The only indisputable fact is that he was born in the last years of the nineteenth century in the Russian Empire, in Poland, in the town of Gura-Kalvarya, in the family of a poor Jew who kept a small garden. Then a split personality begins. Heavy, I must say.

That's right: since people want a miracle, it would be unwise and shortsighted to refuse them.

Brief summary of the autobiographical book "I am a telepath"

The Hasidic elders now and then come to the youth and, lining up in line, predict a great destiny for him. Wolf begins to feel the Power in himself and begins to play tricks recklessly: he sees the future and penetrates with a clear gaze through the veils of the past. Such outstanding minds of Europe as Sholem Aleichem, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud and all sorts of different things in a hurry to meet with a talented young man.

He tours in Warsaw, Vienna and Berlin. His signature act is falling into a catatonic trance for several days. During these trances, he rests in a glass coffin in front of the amazed audience and looks like a "saint's corpse."

His fame is growing, thousands of people flock to Krakow to learn their fate from the lips of a soothsayer. Messing goes to India (there he meets, of course, with Mahatma Gandhi), Japan, America, Australia ... Shines in the light, searches for the missing jewels of aristocrats, communicates with top officials of states, reveals a network of international smugglers ...

In the end, Wolf uncovers himself to the point that at one of the concerts he predicts the fall of Hitler, and this is the last thing a Jew should do in Hitler's Europe. Messing's head is estimated at 200,000 marks (a gigantic amount at that time).

I have to flee back to Poland, and then, with the beginning of the war, to the USSR. Here his fame increases many times over. With his fees, Messing buys several aircraft for the Red Army, and Stalin himself sends him a telegram of thanks. Then the generalissimo asks Messing to demonstrate his abilities: to take 100,000 rubles from the Soviet bank. Under the supervision of NKVD workers, Messing brilliantly hypnotizes the cashier (eventually bringing him to a heart attack) and receives money from an empty piece of paper.

In addition, Messing helps Stalin raise his youngest son, indicates the day of the elder's death, discourages Vasily Stalin from flying on a plane with the Spartak team (the plane crashed and all the players died) ... In general, he does a lot of high-profile cases. The autobiography ends in the mid-50s, that is, the moment when it was written.

Now we need to figure out who we should thank for all this nonsense. And the editors are forced to modestly look down and shuffle their feet, because, of course, this has not been done without our fellow pen. The autobiography of Messing, from the first to the last word, was inspired by Mikhail Vasilievich Khvastunov, writing under the pseudonym M. Vasiliev (and among his colleagues better known as Mikhvas). It is even difficult to say who is more genius - Messing, who drove thousands of Soviet citizens crazy with simple tricks at his concerts, or Mikhvas, who finally turned the psychic into a fabulous monster.

These two talked for only a week - and what could Messing, tortured, timid and extremely poorly fluent in Russian, tell the energetic journalist? The truth? Nobody will read the truth. And 80% of the fee (and this is the amount that Mikhvas demanded for himself) will turn out to be pennies if the circulation is miserable and no reprints take place. And Messing also needs a decent biography - otherwise who will go to his concerts?

And the truth looked pretty dull. Well, a fourteen year old boy escaped from a house with a traveling circus. He worked as a carpet. I cleaned horses and mended dancers' shoes. Then he performed in a freak show, where, lying in a glass box, he portrayed the Japanese Takamura, "who for forty days does not eat anything, only drinks seltzer." The extreme thinness of the young Wolf made up inspired the audience with respect, and he ate at night. And he ate well - receiving five zlotys a day, he ate so much that he had to say goodbye to the role of Takamura six months later.

Then Wolf became an assistant to the reader of thoughts at a distance and thoroughly learned all the tricks with which fakirs, imperceptibly for the audience, communicated with the assistants. Usually they boiled down to either the substitution of notes from the audience, or to code words and intonations that denote objects and actions that the speaker must perform.

“Guessing the contents of the pockets was easy,” Messing recalled. - Well, what does an adult carry in his pocket? Handkerchief, glasses, watches, coins. We had a list of up to a hundred objects, each of which had its own combination of the assistant's usual phrases: “What is in my left, did I say in my left hand? And what is on the right? More precisely? " But I was wary of children. Children can carry anything they want with them: glass pieces, dead mice, spent cartridges ... "

When Wolf began performing on his own, he was shaking on stage with horror. The constant fear of exposure was his nightmare. He very carefully introduced new numbers into the program, and as assistants he always preferred his wives or mistresses - only to them, loving women, he could trust completely and in their presence he felt more protected.

Nevertheless, Messing trembled, sweated and stuttered at performances all his life - this was his corporate style. It seemed to people that it was seething with his mystical energy, and he usually had a stomach ache from excitement ... And he never ceased to amaze him with the credulity and humility of people. If Wolf told them to jump with their eyes closed, they jumped, ordered to dance - they danced ...

When Wolf began performing on his own, he was shaking on stage in horror.

Of course, the subjects felt even more hunted and lost on the stage than the hypnotist himself, and he chose from the audience the volunteers with the most trusting and benevolent faces ... But, on the other hand, maybe some mystical forces are really behind him, Wolf?

And yet, as soon as the state of finances allowed Wolf to refuse concerts, he immediately settled at home and passed into the status of a clairvoyant by correspondence. He gave advertisements to newspapers and offered to send letters with questions about the eternal, plus 2 zlotys and a postage stamp for the return answer. Sending out horoscopes and recommendations, Messing felt much more confident than during the show, especially since punctures did happen from time to time.

Performances in gymnasiums and lyceums "with the aim of introducing schoolchildren to psychological science and hypnosis in the form of instructive entertainment", for example, almost always ended in fiasco. Disgusting, ill-mannered boys grimaced, hid the things they were looking for, and what could not be found in their pockets ... Rescue calls “Don't think all at once! You are preventing me from concentrating. I ask the gentleman in the front row not to purr this tune to himself - the pan knocks me down! "

Messing, of course, did not have to visit any Americas and Japan - for what money? Where do they get from a poor Jew who trades in hypnosis and horoscopes, he does not run a shoe store, which Madame Rothschild and her daughters go to every day? And in what language would he talk with the esteemed Pan Gandhi? Wolf also spoke Polish through a stump, the only language he knew well was his native Yiddish.

And he did not speak Russian, for which he severely scolded himself when, having fled with tens of thousands of Jews from Poland captured by Hitler, he ended up near Brest, and then in Bialystok. After several months of hunger strikes and overnight stays for casual acquaintances, Messing decided to go to the cultural center, where they recruited artists for propaganda teams.

But then miracles really begin. The fact that Messing survived seems incredible. According to all the laws of the genre, he was to be immediately seized as a dangerous spy-madman and sent to the great construction sites of the Motherland.

Instead of this sad but logical ending, the unexpected happens: the "Polish telepath" is allowed to speak in front of the party workers. A pretty assistant interpreter Sima also appears, whom Wolf quickly coaches to the most elementary - transmitting hand signals through a handshake, a few code phrases ... And Messing is allowed to speak to the public. Agreements are signed with him for such amounts that he could not even dream of. Newspapers begin to promote the Soviet psychic, the tour list takes up half of the map of the USSR, and applications for the visit of a new miracle are flying from cities that have not yet been covered.

Wolf Messing and Aida Rapoport

Messing came, as they say, into the vein. The whole country then raved in unison with the creation of a new man - a person who would be able to soar above the pitiful framework established by nature. The image of a superman hovered over the filthy kitchens of communal apartments, barracks, skyscrapers, offices and factory workshops. Science fiction novels went off with a bang, the central press was not much different from them. The country lived with illusions and readily opened its arms to a little frightened magician who could never get used to these mighty hands. Or at least figure out what's what.

But he received a telegram from Stalin, with gratitude. That the telegram is a worthless piece of paper. But she saved his life

The war began, Sima perished in the captured Minsk, and Wolf missed her, but continued to tour with already new companions. He really bought the Red Army plane - with all the savings he made (of which there were not many, not a few million). True, he was not going to buy an airplane, but dreamed of acquiring an ancient castle in Poland (poor Wolf never fully understood the idea of nationalizing property). But he was arrested, shouted at him in the NKVD and even put a Mauser to his nose, so Wolf first fainted, and then signed all the papers.

But he received a telegram from Stalin, with gratitude. That the telegram is a worthless piece of paper. But she saved his life when, in 1942, Wolf succumbed to the persuasion of the Polish refugee Abram Kalinsky, whom he met in Tashkent, and decided to flee to Iran, transferring part of the newly earned money into gold. Abram brought Wolf to the border and left him in some hut, where the NKVD members notified by Kalinsky came, after which Messing spent several months in prison.

Stalin's telegram nevertheless played its role. Large officials were afraid to take responsibility for the oppression of a man whom the secretary general himself thanked in the newspapers, and Messing was eventually released.

But on the whole, his fate was quite successful. The concerts went well, and Wolf's fame grew every day. Residents of the Land of the Soviets, well trained in discipline and great specialists in being like everyone else, on stage turned into obedient dummies. And what to expect from people tortured by the war and the authorities, when, in a normal situation, for one skeptic there will always be twenty who happily believe - Messing knew this proportion very well.

He met Aida Rapoport, who became his wife and assistant. Stalin's death and the subsequent thaw only increased his audience and royalties. And when Mikhvas appeared on the stage, burning with the desire to describe the biography of the genius, Messing did not object.

For an artist, a fictional biography is sacred

Although what could he tell? As a child, she and her father sprayed the garden from pests? How did the yeshiva teacher, blushing, try to explain to little Vevel that the inhabitants of Sodom did not want to eat Lot's guests at all, but “... well, there are such vicious people who look at men as women”? How was he, who went on a hunger strike, force-fed with shaken eggs in a Tashkent jail - through a hose?

The life of every person is full of funny, sad, and even black pages, but Mikhvas needed something different, namely a full-scale heroic epic. And Einsteins, Freuds and Gandhi marched into the biography of Messing, Scotland Yard and the Pinkerton agency squeezed in, and the sad mustachioed Marshal Pilsudski drove up in a big black car to the house of the great magician with a basket of champagne and diamonds ...

Why didn't Messing protest? Why should he protest? First, the person is weak; secondly, a person needs a decent income, and fame, by the way, of some kind. And what about protection from colonels who brandish their Mausers in front of innocent people? After all, he doesn't reveal his tricks to anyone, he's an artist. And for an artist, a fictional biography is sacred. After all, this is not a deception, this is art, a fairy tale that has come to life, and people always want fairy tales.

In addition, the war destroyed almost all archives in Europe, swept away customs and editorial offices, city halls and outposts, left gigantic gaps in newspaper files and radio recordings - no one would even figure out what really happened there. All the same, the whole world is behind the Iron Curtain, there is no road there, and all these Japan and Brazil are almost unreal and unattainable, like the Moon.

After that, several more works were written about Messing, for example, Tatyana Lungina or Varlena Strongin. But they were always based on Messing's autobiography as the main source of all information about him.

“It was difficult to speak with Messing himself - he spoke poorly in Russian,” the researcher Lungina later wrote. Everything is correct. The great reader of thoughts and superman could not really master a single foreign language in his entire life.

But he always gladly used the opportunity to talk with people in Yiddish, as, for example, in that cell of the Tashkent SIZO, where he spent three months with the refugee Ignatii Shenfeld, to whom he confessed in anticipation of imminent execution. Schönfeld also managed to survive, although he spent many years in the camps. And decades later, he, becoming a true biographer of Messing, published his memoirs and studies. But since Schönfeld could not tell anything interesting about the power of otherworldly worlds, telekinesis and the supernatural abilities of the human spirit, then his work was ignored. Who needs boring facts about the life of a small, forever frightened magician? Messing was right: since people want a miracle, it is unwise and shortsighted to refuse them.

Wolf Grigorievich Messing died in 1974 from heart disease. There were almost a million rubles on his savings book, but the artist lived in a small two-room apartment, had almost nothing of value, and from the close creatures he had only his beloved lapdog. True, many, many journalists attended the funeral. We do not know how for the world of psychological science, but for us he did a lot of good.

Expert opinion

The psychotherapist of the Medservice Plus center Boris Matveevich Levin answers our questions.

Tell me, doctor, does hypnosis not exist?
- This is a fairly common human condition.

That is how it is?
- Sleepily, for example. When you answer the phone, wander to the bathroom, walk into the kitchen to chew on something, and then go to bed and wake up with only vague memories of what happened. Or no memories at all.

The picture is familiar, we spend our whole life like this ... but this is not hypnosis. Hypnosis is when a doctor makes passes over you and orders: “Sleep! Sleep!"
- You can also pass. And a flickering circle before your eyes is possible. Or you can just talk to the patient - the main thing is that he wants to go into a trance.

And against your will?
- Against - it will not work. In any case, if we are talking about a normal, healthy person.

And Messing, they say, managed to hypnotize the bank teller and take out a bag of money.
- You never know what they say. However, if the cashier had not slept for three days, then this could have happened.

Well, well, let's say the patient himself wanted to be hypnotized - he relaxed, fell into a trance, sits so helpless, does not answer for himself ... You could order him to do something like that ...
- To rob a bank?

Well, for example.
- You have absolutely wild ideas about hypnosis. Usually it is used in order to get the patient to talk, to allow him to express his problems, which will be difficult to talk about in a state of full wakefulness. If only because he may not remember them in this state. Imagine that the house has a front staircase and a back door. We want to call one of the owners, but they don't hear from the front door. Come on, call the black one. There is a chance that it will be easier to get a person out of there. Or maybe not - and everything, on the contrary, is stuffed with boards crosswise. Memory, consciousness is a very complex thing, multi-layered, overloaded.

And how do you do operations under hypnosis without anesthesia?
- The pain can be turned off during the session, but there is no guarantee. If the irritation is strong, the receptors can make themselves felt at the most unexpected moment. Theoretically it is also possible to code, but practically ... When a person wakes up, he takes control over himself, no longer operates with the so-called subconscious, but with common sense. Which will tell him that robbing a bank is a stupid idea.

As for telepathy ...
- Then she's gone. There is intuition, good knowledge of people, the ability to understand their facial expressions and high-quality logic. I am convinced of this.

Well thanks, doctor. Today you robbed me of my faith in a miracle.
- You're welcome.

Photo: Publishing House "AST-PRESS KNIGA" (VL Strongin "Wolf Messing. The Fate of the Prophet"); ITAR-TASS; Taxi / Fotobank.com; Yuri Koltsov.

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