Wolf Messing was born in Poland on September 10, 1899, in a village
not far from Warsaw.. He was a Jewish "mentalist" (psychic;
ESP practitioner). Prior to 1939, he toured many countries demonstrating
his psychic abilities (presumably like an earlier version of Uri
Geller). Messing went (fled?) to Russia in 1939 after the Nazis
killed members of his family, married there and died there in
1974.
His father and brothers perished in the Maidanek
death camp during World War II. His mother did not live to see
that though. Many Polish Jews were then going to Germany driven
by scathing poverty and unemployment. The little Wolf was also
on his way there. Having no money to buy a train ticket, he hid
under the seat and fell asleep. A short while later his slumber
was cut short by a ticket checker loudly requesting his ticket.
The boy was scared to death and with pretty good
reason too, because in Hitler’s Germany any transgression,
even a free ride, could easily cost one his life. His eyes glued
to the controller’s, the shaken boy proffered a trembling
hand clutching a scrap of newspaper mentally beseeching the man
to take it for a ticket. The controller gave him a strange glance:
“Why are you hiding then, you little fool? C’mon,
get up, we are arriving in Berlin shortly!” he said punching
the piece of paper Wolf had offered him.
The boy took some time to realize his suggestive powers though.
He explained his luck with the ticket checker as the man being
too tired to take a better look or, maybe simply feeling pity
for him. It took another incident for Wolf to finally appreciate
his supernatural powers. In Berlin, sweeps were fast becoming
a routine affair and many Jews never showed up at home after work,
being instead whisked away to concentration camps or being summarily
executed. Being a Jew, Wolf Messing finally got caught by that
deadly dragnet.
Having neither an ID card not a job certificate
and almost starving, he was thrown behind bars. Another close
call. He thought how great it would be if the wardens left his
cell unattended and retired into a faraway room. Well, this crazy
idea miraculously came true! Shortly after, the guards left. Then
they came back only to see that their young captive was gone!
Wolf Messing then landed the job of a messenger.
Once, hauling a hefty parcel, the starving young man blacked out.
Thinking the boy was dead, the doctors sent the body to the mortuary
where, much to Wolf’s luck, a young intern managed to feel
his heartbeat. Waking up, Messing was told he had been in a coma
for a whole three days.
Interested, Doctor Abel started teaching the
teen the art of telepathy, which was very much in vogue back in
those days. Doctor Abel also found him a job with a wax museum
where Messing wowed the public five days a week lying inside a
crystal casket pretending he was dead.
His first concerts, box office grabbers all, were in Vienna in
1915. It was then and there that Wolf Messing made the acquaintance
of Albert Einstein. The great psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, who
was then staying with the great physicist, wanted to check out
the young man’s extraordinary mind-reading abilities.
Acting on Freud’s mental orders, the shy
and self-effacing Wolf went up to the table and picking up a pincer,
plucked out three hairs from the host’s famous moustache.
A puzzled Einstein winced in pain and Freud gave out a satisfied
chuckle. Messing had read out Freud’s mind and stood the
test just perfectly!
Buoyed by that initial success, Wolf started
touring the world as a psychic entertainer. When the Nazis invaded
Poland in 1939 Messing fled the country to escape the wrath of
Adolf Hitler whose death in 1945 he had publicly prophesied. Messing
was wanted by the Fuhrer after declaring his prophesy about Germany’s
defeat during its attempted invasion of the east and offered a
sum of 200,000 marks for his head.
Arrested before he could leave the country, Messing was thrown
behind bars. Unfazed by his predicament, he mentally ordered his
prison guards to assemble in his cell and, locking them up there,
he managed to get away to Moscow.
Knowing very little Russian and having no definite
profession, Messing took a mere six months to gain a superstar
status in the Soviet Union where magicians and mesmerists were
never much liked by the country’s Communist authorities.
Who knows, maybe he owed his officially backed popularity to a
prediction that red-starred tanks would some day be rumbling up
and down the Berlin streets?
Word about the great Wolf Messing finally reached the Kremlin
and Josef Stalin wanted to see him. Overawed, Messing started
showing off his supernatural psychic powers. Puffing on his pipe,
Stalin said, “Well, you could rob a bank this way, right?”
“Yes, I could . . . ” Messing replied. Shortly after,
Wolf Messing, with a bevy of security agents in tow, walked into
the Central Bank headquarters in Moscow with an order to take
away 100,000 rubles.
Walking up to the teller’s window, Messing handed him a
blank sheet of paper and opened his briefcase. Receiving a mental
order, the no-nonsense teller carefully examined the paper and
readily produced the required sum. Messing left the building and
immediately returned giving the money back to the teller. The
man stared at the empty sheet of paper for one brief moment and
. . . went down unconscious!
Wolf Messing was in particular circles a quite
well known ‘psychic stage performer,' to whose name nowadays
are attached a number of persistent stories. The weaving together
of a handful of anecdotes and some hard facts has made Messing
into a legendary figure.
One aspect of the current ‘Messing myth’
has been created by the Indian guru Sri Sathya Sai Baba and his
followers. It is dealt with by former Sai Baba-devotee Brian Steel
within the context of de-mystifying stories intimately connected
to this false guru.
Wolf Messing lived 76 years. Even a magician
of his stature is powerless in the face of Death. Wolf Messing
took the secret of his amazing psychic powers with him . . .
For more in-depth study on Wolf Messing and related
psychotronic phenomena, see:
Confidential File 10017: Psychotronics: “The Only Way to
Go Is Up!” (A7890), The Summit University Press, The Summit
Lighthouse, P.O. Box 5000, Corwin Springs, MT 59030-5000, USA,
Email: tslinfo@tsl.org
|