Mary Karadja

Marie Louise "Mary" Karadja (née Smith; 12 March 1868 – 7 September 1943) was a Swedish writer, spiritual medium and aristocrat, a central figure in Western esotericism during the Belle Époque. Born in Stockholm to the business magnate Lars Olsson Smith, she married prince Jean Karadja Pasha, an Ottoman diplomat, with whom she had a son, the Romanian diplomat and scholar Constantin Karadja. She lived in various European countries, and published works in several languages—beginning with aphorisms in French. Her involvement with Kardecist spiritism dates to 1899, and was prompted by the deaths of an infant son and of her husband the prince. Under the influence of spiritism, Theosophy and neo-gnosticism, the princess produced spirit drawings and writings that she stated were inspired and dictated to her spiritually. She was a literary celebrity in her native country for a while, and corresponded with August Strindberg; she was also heavily criticized for her claims by investigators such as Henry Morselli and Joseph McCabe, and was a regular target of Birger Sjöberg's satirical articles.

In the 1910s, Karadja had become explicit in her criticism of Christianity, favoring the unification of faiths into one world religion; she outlined her interpretation of religious mysteries in various texts, including her 1912 play about Solomon, drawing in themes from Rosicrucianism and the Freemasonry, as well as from the Kabbalah. The princess was rebuked by Roman Catholic integralists such as Henri Delassus, who regarded her and her convictions as components of a destructive plot against Catholicism. Her religious convictions blended with her charity work, as with the White Cross Union that she helped found. During World War I, she helped as a philanthropist, fleeing her home in Belgium once that country had been taken by the Germans.

Switching to Nazi and generally antisemitic views during the interwar period, Karadja financed various organisations that held those views, and founded the Christian Aryan Protection League. During the 1930s, when she was living mostly in Switzerland and networking with its National Front, she became noted for defending The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as an authentic document; she also supported a prototype of the Madagascar Plan, calling for the mass deportation of European Jews. Her own fortune greatly reduced by the Great Depression, Karadja endorsed monetary reform as proposed by Arthur Kitson. Her far-right convictions were at the center of public controversy in Switzerland, resulting in her being singled out as an agent of influence on behalf of Nazi Germany. They had also caused a rift with her sister, Lucie Lagerbielke, who supported far-left causes. The princess died at the height of World War II, just as her son Constantin had come to oppose Nazism and had begun rescuing Jews from the Holocaust.