The Montenegrin

only three weeks together. There was still a lot she didn't know about this Montenegrin matriarch, and there's so much I want to tell you. As you'll see, Olga Vanna is a fascinating woman, a woman who lived through revolutions and revelations, all in the pursuit of immortality. I'm not making this up. That's really what she was after suss

twelve years so I wish for immortality. If I realized that human life was so trungent that by the time a human bee has STEVI looked his powers he used to leave, it was impossible for me to accept, and I was stain that I was a way out, and I found for me that way out. So who was this woman who had yearned for speed Lana to come and visit, who had promised to be spet Lana's mother reincarnate if spet Lana would play daughter, and who seemed

to be queen mother to everyone around her. In this episode, we're going back to find out to the shores of the Black Sea, to the origins of an existentially adrift aristocrat who became the devoted disciple of an Armenian mystic, the wife and partner of an architectural giant, and a force to be reckoned with in her own right. My name is Dankatroser, and this is Svetlana spet Lana. You wake up in the morning, you live your day, and then you do it tomorrow, and over and over again,

and over again and over over again. Act one, The girl from Montenegro. When Olga Vana was fourteen, she went to a fortune teller in Betomy, Georgia, on the Black Sea. She describes it vividly in an autobiography published after her death. The creaky winding stairs, the sparse room with four chairs, a square table, and a milky crystal ball, the not at all creepy painting of a baby with bulging eyes that hung in the corner. Olgavannah listened to the woman

as her brow furrowed with concentration. She warned of an early unhappy marriage, but added, and I quote, you will be given a chance to change your destiny. If you do, you will marry a very famous man. I think he has something to do with geometry. I see triangles, circles

and squares. As a highly educated young woman who'd grown up amongst the aristocracy, her mother a fierce army general, her father the Chief Justice of Montenegro, Olgavannah had seemingly gone into the experience a bit skeptical, but she couldn't help but wonder who this man would be, this very famous man who had something to do with geometry. Okay, look, we all know who this man will be spoiler alert, as the kids say. But at the time Olgavannah wouldn't

have known anything about Frank Lloyd Wright. She was a teenager halfway around the world, living with her rich sister in Georgia, yearning to move to Moscow to be an actress, and now she apparently needed to find her soulmate, the man who would save her from unhappiness and change her life, which gives us no other alternative than to go live from the closet inside my basement. Welcome to the Montenegrin dating game. It's time to meet our first three eligible

bachelors and he they are. Will Olgavana end up with Bachelor number one, Valdemar Hinsenburg, a Latvian architect who comes on strong, marries this teen bride and gives her a daughter, staid Lana. Nope, Hinsenburg is more of a Hindenburg, a blimp of a marriage that's not gonna fly. So let's meet bachelor number two. It's Luigi. Luigi is a childhood friend who reunites with Olgavana as her cabaret costar at the theater her husband owns. Their chemistry explodes on and

off stage. Could this man change her destiny? Nope. His parents find out about the affair and, mortified send him away. Before we meet bachelor number three, let's take a break and get really depressed. Things for Olgavannah were getting hard, and not just in her love life. The Russian Revolution had destabilized the region and where Olgavana had come from wealth and aristocracy. She was now like everyone else, selling her jewelry and waiting in line for bread. She was

also still in a loveless marriage. The fortune teller had been right about that, and her little daughter spit Lana was sick with dysentery, you know that thing you always get in the organ trail game. It was a tough time, an all is lost kind of time. And in the midst of that despair, a friend told Olgavana that she ought to go see this Armenian mystic. He was teaching strange mathematical dances that could unlock the inner soul and

perhaps lead to immortality. And didn't the fortune tellers say that her mystery man would have something to do with geometry. When Olgavana pushed open the door to see the dances of this strange mystic, she walked in on a bald man in his fifties with a Salvador Dali mustache, impishly instructing a group of women how to dance. This is bachelor number three. This is Joe Ji Gerjeff Gerjeff was born in Armenia in eighteen sixty six. To put that

in context. That is exactly one year after eighteen sixty five, on a spiritual quest in the deserts of Afghanistan, Gurjeff discovered Sufi dances that awaken the soul. There's a very dull movie called Meetings with Remarkable Men about Gerjeff's ascendance, which lands on him witnessing these very dances called the Movements. Everyone in the monastery learns the alphabet of these movements. We can read him. The truths placed them many thousands

of years ago. I understand riveting. The dances were unlike anything Olgavana had ever seen. They demanded a precision that would take hours, days, weeks, months to perfect. And they weren't just beautiful. They were transcendent, spiritual, mathematical meant to unite one's mind, emotions, and physical being. The dances were also centered on the pelvis. Gerjeff would say, ass is projector for understanding all other parts of a person. Ass

is root, and this is why I love history. With these movements, along with a system of self development he called the Fourth Way, Gurjeff promised to develop quote harmonious individuals who could achieve a higher level of consciousness Olgavana was intrigued. Gurjeff's belief system was harsh but clear. You can become anything you want to be. Olgavannah recalls him telling her you can be godlike. You can do things plain mortals cannot do, provided you struggle with yourself to

overcome your weakness Georgivinich. She said, most of all, I want immortality, and Gurjeff said he could help her. He sends her on a rocky style, rigorous training period that will make her into the best Gergiffian disciple of them all. First, fire your servants, cook and clean for yourself and for all the Gurgiffians. Jab jab left hook jab. Second, give up all material possessions, suffering as how you grow uppercut punch punch noogie jab. Third, learn the movements math dance,

math dance, math dance. You can see it now, can't you. It's every dance montage rolled into one. It's Fossy Verdin, It's Julia Stiles and save the last dance. It's flashdance. People. We are maniac maniac on the floor. Olgavana was gaining favor and growing closer and closer to higher consciousness, but the tests were also getting harder and harder. In the most brutal test of all, Gergiev asks Olgavana to send away her daughter, spent Lana, to her brother in America.

Spent Lana, her precious five year old. It's at this moment when I want to remind us all that decades later, our own spet Lana set Lana Aloyeva would be faced with the same dilemma. Go for the thing you really want, but give up your children on the way. But Olgavana, spet Lana was still a kid. This abandonment is the stuff of fairy tales, of biblical challenges. I offer you eternal life if you give up your child. Olgavana makes the deal. She packs up her little girl and sends

her to America. Now alone, Olgavana can focus entirely on her studies in France with what Gergeff calls his Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man, the if Dom for short. No one calls it that, but I will. The if Dom is headquartered in an old forty five acre French estate outside of Paris called the Prior, three story mansion, with a sweet for Gerjef and former servants quarters for the disciples who are meant to part with all things comfort.

Gergef is particularly hard on Olgovana, Knowing that her heart is aching for her daughter, he puts her in charge of caring for the children of other disciples, and when he catches herself soothing by eating desserts in the kitchen at night, he cuts off sweets from her diet. If making Olgavana take care of kids while hers is away is salt on a wound, then taking away her sweets is a dump in the mouth. But she understands that these hardships, these are a part of the journey. Do

not shut yourself while taking on suffering. You can benefit and you can learn really inside. At the if dumb people flock to study and live under Gerjeff and his principles, nobody slept more than a few hours each night. They listened to him lecture and read his writings. During the day. They dressed in formal attire for meals at night, cooked by the fellow disciples, and then in the evening they perform the movements. It was rigorous and angular, and in

unison it was math dance. Day after day there was notice and then at that time you really know what relaxation is. Then you enjoy the moments of your life to which you have given consent. Meanwhile, according to the Fellowship, Gerjeff was sleeping with most, if not all, of his young female followers, including married women, probably Olgavana too, who, fun fact, was still married to spet Lana's father. Oh

and you want another fun fact. According to some lucky ladies, Gerjeff could apparently make a woman orgasm from across the room with just his gaze. But as great as this dance, billed fuck Topia was, money was always a challenge. Geometrically, dancing together outside of Paris is not exactly lucrative, and they were in danger of losing prearray. On Christmas Day, Olgavannah gathers with a hundred other followers for a banquet like an Armenian Willie Wonka. Gerjeff announces he's hidden a

golden coin in the Christmas pudding. Whoever finds it will be marked for greatness, he says, and given the gift of a newborn calf. The disciples dig in, and as Olgavan a spoon dips below the surface, there's the sound

of a clink, it's the golden coin. After dinner, Gerjeff brings Olgavana to the stables to the baby calf, and as she cradles it in her arms in the cold night in the winter outside of Paris, she knows the universe is calling her to a new place, a place where she can be reunited with her daughter, A place where the IF can reach new heights and save itself from financial ruin, a place where the roads are paved with gold and people bake apple pies out of baseballs

and freedom, a place called America Act Too. Frankie and Olgavanni, Olgavana, Gerjeff, and an entourage of twenty one students decide to bring their revolutionary movements on tour to make some money and make a splash. They dance in Paris, Chicago, New York. A New York Times critic calls their performance quote the most amaz using dancing he had ever seen. In comparison, the best of the Russian ballet seems like child's play, and speaking of children, Olga Vana is finally reunited with

her daughters. Fet Lana, who's been living in New York City this whole time, with Olgavannah's brother, mother, and daughter are back together again. The tour is a recruiting success, and there's hope of establishing an American bass Big time director Cecil B. DeMille even offers Olgavana a spot in the pictures as a Hollywood dancer. Olgavana declines she's devoted to her master, but her master doesn't seem as devoted to her because he apparently kicks her out of the preorree.

And so in this new chapter of life, Olgavana eventually makes her way to Chicago, where she finally meets her four told geometry man, one mister Frank Lloyd Wright, on a Sunday afternoon in November of nineteen twenty four. And I'm curious if you like I can remember when you first heard the story of how the two of them fell in love and what that story was. Oh wow, I was just reading up on the story last night.

That's Kieran Murphy. For twenty five years, she was a tour guide at tally Esen in Wisconsin, and as something of a Frank Lloyd Wright scholar, she even runs a blog devoted to writing in history Kieran Murphy dot com k e I Ran. When you go on tours of the tally Essen Estate in Wisconsin or tali Essen West in Arizona, you'll be sure to hear the story of how the Rights fell in love. Here's Kieran. They met by chance in Chicago, the Ballet on a Sunday matinee.

Olgavana recalls in her autobiography that she'd had a sudden desire to refresh the memories of her youth, deciding spontaneously to attend a performance by the Russian Ballet. When she arrives, there's just one ticket left, in a partially your pie box.

She takes it. It was a full house. He was in the box seat with his friend, and the only seat open was the seat next to his And he said, right before the lights came down, the usher brought in this dark, exotic, very beautiful woman, and that, of course was Olgavana. Frank Lloyd Wright is fifty seven. Olgavana is twenty six, with a dancer's live physique, thick dark hair, and an aristocratic bearing. By every account, she is stunning.

It's no wonder she immediately catches Right's eye. Eventually he makes his move. Right was not impressed with the main ballerina, and he said, all of these people are dead. It's like the dead dancing for the dead. The dead dancing for the dead. That would have resonated deeply with old Gavana, who'd spent years under Gerjeff learning that most people live as if asleep. It was like Frank Lloyd Wright had uttered a secret code, She writes, I knew then that

it was meant to be. They went out for tea later, and he said he fell in love with her that night, and she said later that she fell in love with him that night too. It's there over tea at the Congress Hotel on Michigan Avenue, where they divulged to each other their pasts, the good, the bad, and the fugley. Wright goes first, diving into his shit show of a life. Forgive me, I'm gonna gloss over what could easily be

a whole other podcast. He tells her of the wife and six children he abandoned for a new life with another married woman, of the butler he fired, who then tragically acts murdered his mistress and her two children and burned his estate to the ground. Of the wealthy woman he'd fallen for in his grief, who'd helped him rebuild Taliessin from the ashes, and how they're relationship had since devolved, you know, really sexy first day kind of stuff. He

was married, he told Olgavana, but utterly alone. Olgavannah goes next. She tells him of her studies with Gergiff, the movements and their supernatural powers. They discuss art and philosophy, each impressed with the other. She talks of her unhappy marriage and her young daughter, spet Lana. A string orchestra plays a Strauss waltz, and Wright asks her to dance. They're alone, gliding through the courtyard. I want to be with you always, Wright says to her. And you, yes, says Olgavanna always.

It's worth noting that I too stayed at the Congress on Michigan Avenue, but I did not fall in love or dance to a Strouse waltz. I'm merely ate deep dish pizza and befriended a janitor who told me stories about the ghost children who haunted the halls. Not long after their chance encounter, Frank invites Olgavannah to the newly rebuilt tally Essen where she implies they have sex all night long in the living room. Boy, isn't that just beautiful? Right?

Calls it fate, Olgavannah, Thanks God, it's divine written in the stars. But fate doesn't allow them to just join forces as quickly as they've joined hearts and other things. They were both still married, after all, and it didn't take long for things to go off the rails. Let's flip through the insane calendar of nineteen twenty five. Shall we march? Oldgavannah is pregnant and she moves into tally Essen. April,

tali Esen goes up in flames for the second time. December, Olgavannah gives birth to a baby girl, Yavanna, causing a Tabloyd sensation. This jolts their family out of Wisconsin and on the lamb. It sets Frank's estranged wife on a legal war path and writes a precarious financial situation forces the bank to seize tally Essen. This time is messy and chaotic, but I'll skip to the happy ish ending

of that insane chapter. In nineteen twenty eight, Frank and Olga Vanna emerge triumphant, divorced, remarried, two kids back in their own home through some clever financial maneuvering. Yes they did it, Love winds. And then in the wake of the Great Depression, the public is burdened with the realities of unemployment and Thomas the Great Depression. If anyone is prepared for this moment, it's Frank and Olgavannah Lloyd Wright.

At sixty two years young, Wright has spent his entire life spending money he doesn't have and bouncing back from financial ruin over and over again. Throughout much of his life, Frank Lloyd Wright was plagued by financial troubles, much of at his own doing, and having survived the Russian Revolution and spent years with Gercheff, Olgavana is a pro at

thriving under duress. Hardship is her whole stick, and at this moment, when it feels like the world is collapsing, Frank and Olgavana Lloyd Wright both dream of forging a new world together, a utopia fashion from their most progressive and exciting architectural ideals and philosophical beliefs, a collective community of like minded individuals in pursuit of beauty and enlightenment. An enterprise that would sustain them during these trying times.

Frank Lloyd Wright was booked before the depression hid in nineteen twenty nine, but the few clients that came to see him at Talius and found themselves broke as well. He had to develop something, something to sustain himself. The Rights were building an army of apprentices who would pay to work at a time when you were lucky to have a job at all. No buildings to build at that hallowing moment, But why not build the builders of buildings against the time when buildings might again be built.

Couldn't have said it better myself. The fellowship would cost more than Harvard. There would be no exams, no degrees. The goal, as the prospectives put it, would be to develop a well correlated human individual, the very thing Olgavana had been training to do for years. Don't you believe with me that that architect must be a full man

with integrity, with honesty, courage. Wars When the Rights start to advertise their fellowship, eager students from around the world wrote in my desire to be one of the apprentices is so great that I would almost slave to be included. It has been said that those who come here, indeed all those whose work is inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright, are more disciples than students of the Master. In nineteen thirty two, Right boldly announced his plans for the tally

Essen Fellowship. Applications poured in from all over the world. By the summer of nineteen thirty two, their first apprentice, William Wesley Peters, makes his way to tally Esen and shakes the hand of Frank Lloyd Wright. Dozens more sign

up to be the inaugural tally Essen Fellows. The Fellowship had begun Act three the struggle within decades later, in her interview with Roger Friedland and Harold Zelman spent Lana would admit that as soon as she met Olgavana in March of nineteen seventy, she had a familiar uneasy feeling. How did you feel about missus right, What was your

sense of her? Well, my sense was tremendous disappointment number one, because I thought that I'm going to meet a woman, dark haired, dark eyed, probably like my mother, born the same year. She was looked like my mother. Told she was very strong, she was very assertive. She was telling people what to do. She was more like my father. She had this yellow spark in her eye. I could

see people who are afraid of her. When the Fellowship began in nineteen thirty two, the apprentices were there to worship at the altar of Frank Lloyd Wright, But after his death, the person they answered to was Olgavana. Her power rested on her partnership with Right, the partnership that had been divined by God, by fate, by a lucky sea placement at a ballet performance in nineteen twenty four.

But what if that tale told over and over again, the tale of happenstance of a man in his late fifties meeting a young woman in her twenties, launching him into the glorious third act of his life and career, and helping him to build this new world of the Talis and Fellowship. What if that wasn't coincidence at all. While working on their book, Roger and Harold wanted to deconstruct that chance meeting. Here's Harold the box seat that

Right describes in the autobiographies over the stage. Those seats were always house seats. That's very meaningful because the person who organized the performance was a gre Chiefian Franklin Wright's seat was provided by a Grechiefian to Olgavanna and Frank those two seats together at the theater. Through years of research, Harold and Roger came to believe that the whole thing was an orchestrated attempt to bait Right with the irresistibly

seductive Olgavana. A ruse. The Gregiffians had been searching for an American base, and Right was the perfect mark. Tally Essen could be their home, and Olgavannah, who'd been cast off by her teacher, could be useful to Gerjeff. Once again, there's a considerable evidence that her whole strategy, which involved arranging to meet Frank Lloyd Wright, was intended to find a perfect place to replace Kerchef's former institute in France.

Olgavana's goal was to meet Frank Lloyd Wright, marry him, and have access to tally Essen in Wisconsin as a center for Gerscheff. Harold and Roger did a bunch of interviews and combed through old correspondence to find other details that support this theory. It's a complicated web of collusion, so if you want the full scoop, you can read

their book. It's fabulous, but look, I'm a romantic. It certainly is a better story if Frank and Olgavana Lloyd Wright had happened to meet and fall in love by chance. Can't you just see them as one of those couples reminiscing and when Harry met Sally talking over each other. We met at the ballet. You was so beautiful, us so old. But I tend to believe that Olgavannah knew who'd be sitting in the box that day, that she

found her mark and she played him. Yet I also believe that Olgavannah did genuinely fall for him, like in Ten Things I Hate About You, where Heath Ledger actually falls for Batman. Either way, the fellowship at tally Esen was the love child of both Olgavana and Frank Lloyd Wright, two powerful people with big dreams and big egos. Over the next thirty years, there are vivid accounts of their relationship as brimming with passion, but also of jealousy and

anger as they fought for their opposing visions. Right wanted Olgavana to choose between the two great men in her life, him or Gerjeff Olgavana wanted Right to make room for them both. This struggle would persist throughout their marriage and the history of the fellowship. Olgovanna would teach dances in secret and lecture at night when Wright had gone to sleep. When he would find out, he'd erupt in rage and

by many accounts, turn to violence. Did a man of such strong will permit a mere woman like yourself to keep her own identity? Did he make any effort to impose his ideas upon you? To impose his ideas upon me? Of course he did. We fought terribly. We fought marvelously too, upon practically every subject. But I don't believe that anyone thought I lack to identity. But the struggle finally ended when Right, at the ripe old age of ninety one, died.

Simon and Garfuncle would sing about it death. The same year, speed Lana arrived at tally Esen West, So Glodry, I can't believe your song is the throne suddenly belonged to Olgavana, and Olgavana alone. No more dissenting opinions and power struggles. The fellowship was hers, and she could tune it to her will without objection, did I ever have an idea of a school? Of course I did, As you will know, I was strained in philosophy and psychology in Guji of school,

which I believe was the greatest contribution to me. This is the tally es and that speed Lana is absorbed into a mishmash of architecture and mysticism. A royal court that reminded Svetlana in some ways of the life she'd left behind in Russia. An insular universe led by Olgavana with a velvet glove and an iron fist who'd always yearned for her throne. A daughterless mother and a motherless daughter, both in perpetual mourning. Two women trying to survive relationships

with complicated and violent men and come into their own power. Yet, whether they realize it or not, these two women are now diametrically opposed to one another. To sustain the taliesin world order, Olgavana needs Fetlana to fall in line, but will Svetlana after everything she's been through. Ben the Knee will find out on the next episode of Svetlana. Svetlana. Svetlana stet Lana is a production of iHeart Podcasts and

the documentary group I'm Your Host Dan Katrosser. The show was written and produced by me Adam Webber, Alison Joy, and Katherine Isaac. We also serve as executive producers at the documentary group. Our executive producer is Joe Batzilouitz, with production oversight by Stacy Kleiger an additional support from Tom Yellen and Gabrielle Tennenbau. Our iHeart team is supervising producer

Casey Pegram and executive producer Maya Howard. Editing assistants from producers Christina Lorenger and Joey pat Original music by Elan Iszakov. Production counsel by Slas ekhous Dasky Haynes Lockoe, clearance counsel by Ballard Sparr, Fact checking assistance by Megan Trout, Research assistance by Caleb Martin Rosenthal, Emily Angg and Sophia Derso.

Special thanks to my husband Jordan Siegel, and Roger Friedland and Harold Zelman, authors of the book The Fellowship, who kindly granted permission to include excerpts from their taped interview with Spetlana