Catherine Radziwill (1858–1941)

Princess Catherine Radziwiłł was born Ekaterina Adamovna Rzewuska to an aristocratic Polish-Lithuanian family living in St. Petersburg, Russia. At age 15, she married Prince Wilhelm Radziwiłł, with whom she had three children, and went to live in Berlin. She wrote memoirs and several gossipy books about German and Russian royalties she had known, sometimes using the pen names Count Paul Vasili and Hildegarde Ebenthal. After separating from her husband, she went to South Africa, where she stalked Cecil Rhodes; she was convicted of forging his signature and spent some time in jail. In New York in 1921, she was credited with helping to show that the anti-Semitic document The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was, in fact, a hoax. After a divorce, she married as her second husband Karl (Charles) Kolb-Danvin. She converted to the Roman Catholic faith and near the end of her life became an American citizen.