Princess Radziwill dead at 84

May 12, 1941

Mrs. Charles Louis Kolb-Danvin died tonight in St. Clare's Hospital in New York, reports the Chicago Tribune.  She entered the hospital on April 15 after suffering a hip fracture.  She was 84 years old.

Mrs. Kolb-Danvin is the former Princess Catherine Radziwill, the daughter of a czarist army officer, who fled her homeland after the Bolshevik Revolution.  She was well-known as "a writer and a lecturer under her title of Princess."

She continued to write "until a few hours before her death, insisting that her knowledge of Europe would be of great value in the present world crisis."

The former princess was the daughter of Count Adam Lzewuski, a Russian army officer.  Her friends including members of the Russian Imperial Family.  A number of her books were "about the many episodes of a youth spent close to the throne of the czars."    Her first marriage was to Prince Adam Charles Radziwill, a member of the Polish princely family.   The couple was based in Berlin, which provided entry to the Prussian court.  Before the prince's death in 1910,  Princess Catherine had "acted as secretary" to Empress Friedrich.

The couple had three children.  Her son, Prince Vladislaw Radziwill, was killed in action in East Prussia during the World War. 

Her second husband, Charles Louis Kolb-Danvin, was an Alsatian by birth but was living in Stockholm Sweden, when they married.  He was an "exporter engaged in trade with English and Dutch concerns."

In 1921,  she was "credited by the American Hebrew with supplying the direct evidence to prove that the Protocols of  Wise Men of Zion were forgeries."  She said she had seen the "manuscript of the Protocols while it was being compiled in Paris by the secret agents of the Czar."  The purpose of the Protocols was political, used after the assassination of Alexander II, and to promote anti-Semitism.

Several years ago, Mrs. Kolb-Danvin became an American citizen.  She had also converted to the Roman Catholic faith.  She is survived by two daughters, who live in Germany.

Mrs. Kolb-Danvin's books included:  It Really Happened, an autobiography; The Empress Frederick; Behind the Veil of the Russian Court; Confessions of the Czarina;  and Germany under Three Emperors.



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