END OF A WASTER

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXX, Issue 4834, 16 April 1936, Page 2

END OF A WASTER

THE CAREER OF ZOUBKOFF. In poverty, neglected, and'forgotten, Alexander Zoubkoff, former dishwasker, who married Princess Victoria of Schaumburg-Lippe, the ex-Kaiser’s sister, at her palace at Bonn in 1927, has died at Luxembourg, aged 35. Princess Victoria died in 1929, at the age of 63, disillusioned by the plausible adventurer who had squandered' her money and forced her into bankruptcy. She Had just begun divorce proceedings against Zoubkoff after he, according to his own story, had refused £10,900 if He would agree to divorce proceedings. The princess first met the young Russian refilgee when a relative

brought him to play tennis with her at Bonn. She was touched with the stories he told her of his life of poverty as a plate-washer in a restaurant, a seaman and a circus performer, and married him, although he was more than 30 years her junior. He was discovered in a Luxembourg cafe last March —workihg as a luggage porter. Zoubkoff used to say that he held compromising letters concerning .the life of the Hohenzollern family. Once when he was acting as tout at a side-show on a fair-ground in Luxembourg he asked the crowd if they would like to hear about his marriage to Princess Victoria, but this was received with such a stoim of hisses that he never repeated the suggestion. Zoubkoff was born on September 25, 1899, in the little industrial town of Ivanovo, about 156 miles from Mos-

cow. He studied medicine at Moscow University, but the outbreak of the revolution brought his studies to a sudden end. Because of his political activities

he had to flee. He went to Sweden, where he became a secret police agent, a post which he gave up to become a singer in a cabaret. Then he got a job on a Finnish steamer, doing menial work. Another phase in his life came when Zoubkoff turned up as a guide to tourists in Marseilles. He went on a world tour, arriving in Berlin in 1927 penniless. Down and out, he spent nights in Salvation Army shelters until he obtained a job in a restaurant for 3s a day. He ultimately set out for Antwerp with the idea of working his way to the Belgian Congo where an uncle had a plantation. His money gave out at Cologne, and he remembered a distant relation in Bonn who, he thought, might help him.

This relative was a frequent guest at the Schaumburg Palace, and procured him an invitation there to tea. He borrowed a pair of respectable but too short trousers, and in these

he ventured to visit the Palace, where he met the Princess Victoria of Schaumburg-Lippe. The meeting was a mutual success. Other inviations to tennis and so forth followed, and gradually a warm friendship sprang up between the couple. Finally, after a swift courtship, they were married. At that time, the Princess said: “I am only tot) glad to have someone to love and protect me.” A life of gaiety followed, and finally after a drunken orgy in Berlin, the organ of the late Dr. Stressemann declared: “It is positively intolerable that this young Russian, who has contrived'to force his way into the family of the Hohenzollerns, should be allowed continually to make him-

self the talk of the town.” Following this outburst, little was heard of ZoubkofT, but in 1934, he came into the public eye by exhibiting what he proclaimed to be a “man elephant” in a Luxembourg circus. He once said, “ I spent £15,000 in a single year, and gave £1 tips.”