The Self-Reported Life of the Sham Prince

Being a prison guard wasn't the most glamorous job in the world. In fact, it probably would be more accurate to call it bleak. But in the years following the Great War, a job was a job, and there was

little room for them. This man to complain. By June of nineteen twenty seven, the fresh wounds left behind by World War One had mostly healed, though it wasn't difficult to remember just a few years earlier, in nineteen twenty three, when the German financial market had all but imploded, with runaway inflation so rampant that some families resorted to burning their German marks as kindling to keep warm in the winter.

While those desperate enough to still use the currency for its intended purpose raced to the markets on payday in hopes of gathering enough scraps of food before the prices would inevitably rise again. Luckily, in the near decade since the war ended, Germany's financial straits had seemingly resolved. But scars like that don't heal over. The sheer number of men behind the prison bars, each face haunted by crimes, likely committed out of poverty and desperation, were in all

too real reminder of that. After clocking in, the guard went about his typical rounds, observing the inmates with the same detached air that he had become accustomed to as a guard. Every day. He walked past everyone from petty criminals to violent offenders. But the guard's job wasn't to judge them for their crimes. The court saw to that. Of course, that didn't stop prison guards from talking amongst themselves.

And while this prison held dozens of men, each with their own stories to tell since January of that year, there was only one inmate that the guards were interested in talking about. From the outside, this man wasn't who you'd expect to be a hardened criminal. He had soft, delicate features. His skin was pale and smooth, unmarred by the calluses and wrinkles that so often signified a life of hard labor or poverty. But more than this prisoner's appearance was the way he chose to spend his days.

He may have ventured into the mess hall at meal times, may have even taken to the fresh air when it was allowed, But what this man did with his free time in his cell was the primary source of his air of mystique. More often than not, when guards walked past this man's cell, they saw him hunched over on his cot or over a table with ink stained fingers, scribbling frantically over pages that he never seemed to tire

of filling. In the months since this man came to the prison, his quarters had become littered with crumpled pieces of parchment and stacks of loose leaf paper decorated with his musings. And perhaps the most unsettling aspect was the fact that, even after six months in prison, he hardly showed any signs of slowing down his writings. In the years after the Great War, men had gone to absurdly desperate measures to keep themselves and their families afloat in

the bereft New German Republic. But the rumors that swirled around the prison about this exceedingly prolific man in his cell topped all those stories of all those prisoners that came before him. Until six months ago, no one had

ever heard the name Harry Domila. But after his arrest, the prison guards in Cologne lingered just a moment longer outside of his cell, each day, craning their necks to get a glance at the men who fooled a nation into thinking that he was the recently deposed Prince Wilhelm of Prussia, the man who conned himself into some of the most exclusive rooms and parties in Germany with nothing more than the clothes on his back and the lies through his teeth. Before nineteen twenty seven, Harry Damila was

a nobody. But as that sixth month came to a close and Damila stared down at the array of pages that littered the floor of his cell, a small smile likely crept onto his face as he no doubt felt the eyes of the omnipresent guards on his back. After so long parading in the shadow of someone else, the eyes of the world were finally turning to him, and as he took in the mass of pages that made up the now completed first draft of his memoir, he was confident that the world would be unable to ever

forget him. I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is noble Blood. On February sixth, nineteen twenty seven, The New York Times was decorated with an iconic headline, false German prince lived a gay life for many weeks. The subhead added, Harry Domila,

soldier and vagabond received honors paid only to royalty. Now, even if the term had yet to be invented, I know a clickbait title when I see one, But in the case of this article, the stranger than fiction premise is more than just a hollow headline meant to grab

the reader's attention. Notable quotes include Damala attending quote fencing parties given in his honor every day and champagne suppers every night, as well as his meeting the Mayor of Gotha and when asked whether he should be addressed as your Oyal Highness or your Imperial Highness, allegedly he said, with a wave of the hand call me Wilhelm if you like. It is every journalist's dream, a true Aladdin, Prince Ali, a Babwa parading across Germany, only instead of

a magic, all powerful genie. The only resources at Damala's disposal were his charm, good looks and an abundant lack of quite literally anything else to lose. But the subtext underneath the entire article boils down to one question, how did he do it? How did one man fool the upper echelons of an entire nation into lavishing him with

gifts and Champagne suppers without a penny to his name. Well, in order to fully understand just how Harry Domelup pulled off his royal deception, we need to take a brief step back and talk about what Germany looked like in the aftermath of World War One. When the war ended in November nineteen eighteen, the German people were in a

state of flux. The country they knew as the German Empire dissolved in the wake of the November Revolution, a period of civil unrest from November nineteen eighteen until August nineteen nineteen, when pressures between the working classes and aristocratic elite came to a head following Germany's devastating losses in the war. From the ashes of the German Empire came the German Republic, a new democratic parliamentary republic, which in turn cemented the end of the nation's monarchy in addition

to a new form of government. The end of World War One brought forth the Treaty of Versailles, which, in the absolute simplest of terms, for the sake of this episode, blamed Germany for instigating the war and sought financial compensation to the Allied powers for the damages that it caused. The ensuing financial strain on an already war torn Germany caused the newly founded Republic to stumble into one of the worst financial crisses in history, having gone into debt

to pay for their war efforts. Germany's loss in the war already had them at a substantial financial deficit, but with the reparations the Allies saddled them with paying, Germany was put into even more unimaginable debt, ultimately sending the country into such a drastic case of hyper inflation that, in some reports, a loaf of bread that had cost one hundred and sixty marks in nineteen twenty two, rose to over two hundred billion by the fall of nineteen

twenty three. This tenuous state of affairs in the newly founded German Republic left its citizens destitute in a country already floundering with its national identity. For the working class, whose fixed salaries were suddenly worthless, survival was their primary concern, But the former aristocratic elite were forced to reckon with a new Germany, one which no longer put its stock in the monarchy or cared much about the status of high society. Which brings us to our favorite prolific prison

inmate and fraudulent German Prince, Harry Damila. Though I feel I can't continue this story without mentioning the fact that, apart from the previously mentioned New York Times article from February nineteen twenty seven, most of what we know about Damila's life comes from those pages that lay scattered across his prison cell. They would eventually be compiled into his best selling memoir titled A Sham Prince, The Life and Adventures of Harry Damila, as written by himself in prison

at Cologne January to June nineteen twenty seven. As you would expect from a man who decided to write a memoir after being imprisoned for parading around impersonating a former German prince. This guy had an excessive amount of what I think we can call main character syndrome, the type of person who feels it starting to rain and decides that it must be the universe unfairly singling them out for some cosmic misdeed, rather than you know that it's

just reigning out. That being said, should you ever find yourself in possession of a copy of this memoir, it is no doubt an interesting read. Damila is a compelling, though at times painfully self indulgent, storyteller who manages to paint his many, many personal anecdotes with the sides that give us insight into these stark differences between the working

and aristocratic classes in post World War One Germany. At the same time, though the book is obviously an interesting text, I would, by no stretch of the imagination call this an unbiased account of the event that took place, So bear that in mind. Whether Damila is begging for help on the streets of Berlin or tricking German aristocracy into believing him to be former nobility. Damila predictably paints himself as the hero of his story, and why shouldn't he.

It's his memoir, his story. But as far as delving into the historical accuracy of it all, I just want to reiterate that in the case of Harry Damila, there really are no quote unquote accurate historical accounts to go by.

That isn't to say he's outright lying about his exploits, but when going through his work, I find it's more worthwhile to view his story through a more critical lens, one that takes into account the fledgling sense of German identity that citizens struggle to take hold of in their newly founded republic following their losses in World War One. Okay, with the historical context and memoir disclaimers out of the way,

let's get into the good parts the story. In nineteen oh four, Harry Damola was born into a small agricultural town on the border of the Russian Empire. Today, the area known as Corland resides within the country of Latvia, but as Damala came of age in the midst of World War I, the area in and surrounding Courland essentially made up the Eastern Front, seemingly surrounded by war at

every turn. At fourteen years old, Damala joined the Free Corps, a private militia group fighting under the German Empire against Baltic rebels. Ousted from his home in the fallout of the Bolshevik Revolution, Damila found a new place to call

home among the ranks of other Free Corps soldiers. It was during this time when he spent his nights huddled around campfires with other young men, telling stories that Damala claims, quote it was here I learned all about lying and bragging, the sort of lying and bragging that hurts nobody, and which would only take in somewhat even more stupid than oneself end quote. Of course, simple lies that have no consequences except for those stupid enough to fall for them.

It's a wonder Damla didn't succumb to altitude sickness from the height at which he stood atop his own pedestal. But I digress. When the war ended, the Free Corp dismissed Damla on account of his being underage and now without a home left to go back to, he set off for Germany to start a new life. Unfortunately for him, without German citizenship or any papers at all to identify himself. Damlo is left with few to know resources at his disposal. Should he try to get work, he would be turned

away for not having German papers. Then, unable to make a livable wage, he was forced to starve on the sleeping in train stations to keep warm until police would arrest him and subsequently detain him for not having papers proving his identity. Eventually he would be released and the

cycle would start over again. During these years, he would run into a motley crew of interesting characters that sort of seem like they're out of an edgy Dickens novel from a cocaine addict named Wolf who took Domila under his wing and taught him how to survive on the streets of Berlin. To a man who called himself Baron Luderates, who was, in fact, in case you hadn't guessed, not

a baron at all. The man who Damala described as quote looking like a scarecrow with worn shoes and an eclectic wardrobe that hung limply off his frame, seemed to make his living selling pamphlets, and after attempting to sell Domila some of his wares, the two shared a meal together, after which the man came clean about his true identity. Quote my name is simply Luderates. But since old Baron von Rothschild addressed me in Vienna as her baron, I

am a baron who's going to stop me? Titles of nobility have been abolished by the constitution of the right, So I am a baron end quote. Initially Domila laughed at his odd counterpart, but throughout the meal the quote baron had taken to calling him her graff, insisting you look like a count ergo you are one. And while the quote Baron's words had first made Domila scoff, after their meal, Damila's laughter seemed to die on his lips. In his own words, quote was he so wrong? After all? Should?

Did I not have had a much easier time as a nobleman? Endote? You can probably guess what happened next. After his introduction to Baron Ludertz, Damila began to adopt his own self imposed honorary titles, often passing himself as Baron Korff during his travels. This worked with varying degrees of success, until after winning a lucky hand of cards, Damila decided to travel from Berlin to Heidelberg, and his career as a fraudulent noble took on a life of

its own. A few decades before all of this, in nineteen o six, a con man named Wilhelm Voit famously used a cobbled together military uniform and pretended to be a captain, And he actually got a number of soldiers behind him under his command, and he enacted a robbery under the guise of official duty. It was a famous case. While Voight was arrested and imprisoned, he became something of a folk hero in Germany, as the quote captain of

Copenick Kaiser Wilhelm Iond would actually pardon him. There was a silent movie made about Voight in nineteen twenty six, the year before Damila's impersonation, and you have to wonder whether maybe Damla either saw the movie or felt something in the air, the sense that maybe confidence could be key, and that pretending to be somebody powerful might actually make you powerful. Upon arriving in Heidelberg, Damala decided to wander the historic university town and introduce himself to the known

aristocratic student social group, the Saxo Borussia. He'd known royals from Courland who had taken part in the famous group, and upon finding them, he introduced himself as Prince Levin Lieutenant in the fourth Reichwach Cavalry Regiment Potsdam. The effect

he had on the students was instantaneous. Members of the Saxo Barassia began tripping over themselves to buy him drinks, take him out to the most exclusive clubs and shows, and generally flaunt their wealth and status in front of a figure that represented a time and way of living that had been lost after the war, but which they still romanticized. For Domila, this was his first real taste into how the other half lived and how out of touch they seemed to be with the plight of the

working class. When passing a local soup kitchen at the university, one member of the Saxo Borussia scoffed at the very thought of disenfranchised students being able to get free food.

In return, Damila, with what I imagine to be a golden halo of purity and righteousness adorning his now saintly visage, retorted quote, it must make you feel damned uncomfortable to live up there in such a fine core house without a care in the world, while your fellow students down here don't know how they are meant to keep themselves alive.

The next day, according to Damila, he soon tired of the Saxo Barosia fawning over him and decided to turn over a new leaf, leaving his persona of Prince Levin behind in Heidelberg as he set out for Irfurt, only

to check into his hotel hell there as Baron Korff. Apparently, the judgment he felt in regards to his counterparts in Heidelberg wasn't enough to fully convert back to a life of being simply Harry Domila in any case, similar to his experience with the members of the Saxo Berusia, Damiala's noble alter ego soon took on a new life of

its own, unrelated to his new identity. In airport, Domiala happened upon an old friend who knew him as Harry, and, upon visiting him at the hotel where he was staying, asked him a question that would go on to shape the rest of Domila's life. Quote, I say, Harry, do you know whom they are taking you for? Here? For Prince William of Prussia. Damila laughed in turn, telling him quote,

don't make silly jokes, my friend. But unbeknownst to rumors around the hotel had spread that quote, baron Korff was a fake name. But it was a fake name being used by Prince Wilhelm of Prussia in disguise, wishing to keep a low profile during his travels. Of course, we know Bhon Korff was actually a penniless nobody named Harry Damila. But who was he to correct them? And so Damala chose to embrace his newly bestowed identity writing quote. Odd

glances were directed toward me. It gave me quite a turn. Everything that I had of the simple Harry Damila dropped away from me. I felt so isolated, so grand, and seemed to be raised above all ordinary creeping mortals. As I'm sure you can tell, the abundance of attention wasn't at a going to his head. And it's here that I'd love to make just a small personal interlude. When I was still in college, I spent a summer interning at the television show on TBS Conan Conan O'Brien's talk show.

It was filmed at the Warner Brothers lot, and at the same time Warner Brothers lot also had the show Pretty Little Liars filming. The lot also had tourists come on sort of extended golf carts weaving away around the lot with tour guides pointing out various things that were

filming in stages. My fellow interns and I, young women in our late teens early twenties, loved the feeling of putting on baseball caps while we were walking to the commissary for lunch and shield holding our faces as the tour groups went by, hoping desperately that they would think that we, any random trio of young women in athe leisure with our faces hidden, were actually the Pretty Little Liars. And people did snap pictures, and yes it was intoxicating.

So this is just to say I understand, but for better or for worse. With Harry Damola, he was an Icarus and he decided that he wanted to continue to fly in style. Wanting to get a wardrobe that fit his new princely persona, Damla left for a day trip to Berlin, only to lose his bag with money on the train ride there. Upon going to the station master for help. He was almost immediately cast off with little patience from the man behind the counter and given a

form to fill out. Damala smugly wrote Prince Wilhelm of Prussia when asked for his name, and he watched the station master's eyes nearly bulge out of his head when he realized his mistake. After leaving the train station with the station master's personal wallet gifted to him and what I imagined to be a jaunty skip in his step, not unlike Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, Damila later found his

own purse in his pants pocket. How very convenient. When he was set to return to Rfort, the station master had organized a personal escort for him, and I feel like I should note this is just the beginning of the ridiculous hijinks Domla would revel in in his all

too brief tenure as Prince Wilhelm. From that trip on, Damila would be treated to luxury suites, box seats at the opera, which he would critique as being overacted by performers too awestruck at his presence to do their job well, and taken out to such lavish dinners and parties he could barely go a step without unwonted attention. There's not nearly enough time for me to go into even half of the stories Domala felt necessary to put in his memoir, And if I'm being honest, only a quarter of them

are really worth mentioning anyway. But there is one story I feel best encapsulates how exactly Domila was able to carry on his charade for as long as he did. One night, Doamala went out to dinner with the proprietor of the hotel he was staying at. The man whom Domla calls the counselor, mentioned that he saw something weighing on the young man's mind. Obviously, Domila couldn't answer with the truth that what was weighing on his mind was that he was a nobody parading as a prince and

abusing everyone's good will for his own selfish gain. So when he didn't respond, the man continued, quote, the world lies open before you. Who knows how the future of our people will shape itself? Who knows what you may some day be called on to do. Many people see in you the future emperor and king. So you must learn to realize during the years of hoping and waiting what mistakes the old regime made. Remember the old national hymn, Neither horses nor men can keep secure the steep heights

where princes stand end quote. The emotion with which Damila writes the old man speaking is likely the true reason he was able to carry on his farce for as long as he did. People want to believe it. Despite the high esteem Domla no doubt held himself in. I don't think his skill as an actor is what sold his persona as the deposed German prince. Really, I think it had little to do with Domola at all. Inside

by side comparisons between the two men. Other than being white and young and having generally slender builds, they're not really twins. But what Damila and Prince Wilhelm did have in common was what their presence meant to the people who met them. After the devastating losses of World War One, the German Republic not only lost an entire generation of young men, but their sense of nationalism. They were eager

for civil national pride wherever they could find it. The monarchy may have no longer served a purpose in the German government, but its presence remained a symbol of hope

and pride, especially for upper class German citizens. While men like these self proclaimed baron ludates used noble titles as a way to patchwork together respect in a time when Germany's social hierarchy was in tatters, men like the Counselor saw the deposed monarchs as vestiges of a time when all of their lives had significance before the war and ultimate financial crisis all but stripped them of their finances

and yes, social status. The truth was, Harry Damla likely wasn't the best actor, nor did he look particularly close in relation to the Prince of Prussia. He did, however, give the people of the upper class a reason to flaunt their wealth and status. Again. He reminded them of life before the war, before Germany had lost everything, and after losing his home, fighting in a war and ending up on the streets all before turning seventeen, who was Harry Damila to turn away the affections of those who

were gullible enough to believe him. In the end, Damila's run as Prince Wilhelm of Prussia couldn't last forever. Eventually, the imposta prince got tired of the attention given to him in airport, and decided to leave for France to

join the Foreign Legion in early nineteen twenty seven. Though the timing of his newfound apathy happened to coincide with reports being made about the quote unquote Prince's adventures in Heidelberg some weeks before, likely caused Damila to begin to feel the fragile walls he had constructed begin to close in on him. Before he even made it out of the country, he was intercepted on the train to France

and was apprehended by police for his crimes. From there, he was transferred to the prison in Cologne, where he would spend seven months in a sell a waiting trial and writing what would go on to become a best selling memoir. When his case finally made it before a judge, the jury surprisingly acquitted Damola of all charges, with one source writing of their decision quote, While he had taken advantage of prominent members of society, his scheme had been

mostly harmless end quote. Upon his release, Damila received his first advance for his memoir, which would go on to sell over two hundred thousand copies worldwide and be adapted for both stage and screen. With that money, he would send Crown Princess Cecil, Prince Wilhelm's mother a bouquet of flowers with a note that read to her Imperial Highness, the Crown Princess Cecil, I was honored to be taken for your son. Ultimately, Damala wouldn't stay in Germany for long,

with fascism on the rise in Berlin. Some sources claim that Damala's homosexuality was the reason for his departure, though as I mentioned before, there are no real accurate sources. When it comes to Harry Damila, I will say that his memoir does go into detail about many of his relationships with men, and while on the page they were platonic, there were significantly fewer, if any, anecdotes about any relationships

or friendships at all with women. Regardless, by nineteen thirty three, Damila fled for the Erlands and eventually South America, where he would live the rest of his life in relative obscurity until his death in nineteen seventy nine. On paper, Damila's life seems almost unbelievable. To have paraded around as a deposed German prince for months and gotten away with

it it seems too good to be true. But in the months the young Quote Prince spent pretending to be something he wasn't, people who believed him were, to an extent, participating in their own folly, falling over themselves to serve a royal whose throne technically no longer existed. They were just trying to have a taste of the life that they had before their country had lost everything, to still

pretend that these structures of monarchy and privilege still mattered. Or, in the words of Harry Damala, quote the sort of lying and bragging that hurts nobody and which would only take in someone even more stupid than oneself. That was the unbelievable life of Harry Damala, the Fake Prince of Prussia. But stick around after the sponsor break to hear a little bit more about the stage and screen adaptations of

The Sham Prince. After his release from prison, Harry Damila's memoir The Sham Prince became more than just an international bestseller. Before long, playwright and filmmakers were eager to get their hands on the story, and you better believe Damila wasn't going to miss his chance to get into the spotlight In December of nineteen twenty seven, just months after being released from prison, Damla would star in the silent film

adaptation of his life's story titled The False Prince. A quick note here, we have scoured the internet and haven't been able to find it. So if you were listening to this podcast and have ever come across that Silent film, or if you ever do come across it in the future, please let me know. If you take nothing else from this episode, let it be remembered that no one has ever manifested their main character energy harder than Harry Damola.

He literally became the main character of the movie made about his life, and if that wasn't enough in the case of stage adaptations, some sources say that Damala sued one of the productions that refused to cast him in the title role. Of course, this is not confirmed, but considering his track record, I really don't think it's completely out of the realm of possibility, because if there was ever one person who would take someone to court over the right to impersonate his own likeness, it would be

Harry Domela. Noble Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky Noble Blood is created and hosted by me Dana Schwort, with additional writing and researching by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender, and Lori Goodman. The show is edited and produced by Noemi Griffin and rema Il Kahali, with supervising producer Josh Thain and executive producers Aaron Manke, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick.

For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.