Jewish The WeekHistory In News
DECEMBER 10, 2015 | The Jewish Home
in New York, where he sold the story of his Chinese exploits to the New York World magazine. Fact was heavily laced with fantasy, as with Trebitsch claiming to have been at the heart of every major political and military upheaval in China over the previous three years, always one step ahead of the foreign intelligence services and various other foes, real and imagined. But New York had nothing to offer Trebitsch, and he once again went to China where he took to wandering around the country. During that time he decided to explore Buddhism, and within a few months he had moved to Sri Lanka (then Ceylon), where he holed himself up at a Buddhist monastery and began to prepare himself for conversion. This might have turned out to be just another one of Trebitsch’s insane flirtations, but a dreadful piece of news from England seems to have pushed him over the edge in a way that no previous news had ever done before. Trebitsch’s relationship with his family had always been sporadic. Over the years he had seen them from time to time, and his wife and some of his children had even spent time with him in China. One of his sons, Ignatius Jr., was a soldier in the British army. In December 1925, in a state of complete drunkenness he entered a residential house together with a fellow soldier in an attempt to rob it. In the course of the robbery a resident confronted the pair and Ignatius Jr. drew a pistol and shot him dead. The two soldiers were quickly apprehended and tried, and on January 21, 1926, Ignatius Jr. was sentenced to death, despite it having been proven that he was drunk on the night in question. By the time Trebitsch heard about his son’s impending execution, it was already February. Trebitsch immediately boarded a boat to Holland in an attempt to get to Europe in time to say goodbye to him, but when he arrived in Amsterdam he was told his son was already dead. The news seems to have jolted Trebitsch into a new realm. From that moment on his flirtation with Buddhism would dominate his life. In attempt after attempt with various official bodies and people of influence he tried to reach Tibet, or to meet with the Panshen Lama, who was one of the two holiest figures in Buddhism. But Trebitsch’s reputation as a master of intrigue and political agitation dogged him; for the rest of his life he found himself unable to do even the simplest things without stirring the interest of official
Admiral Miklos Horthy, the Regent of Hungary, who met with Trebitsch and Colonel Max Bauer in Budapest in May 1920
bodies and foreign intelligence services. In 1931 Trebitsch was formally ordained as a Buddhist monk. He was never seen in western clothes again, and from that time on only went by the name ‘Chau Kung’. His wanderings continued apace, now with the accompaniment an entourage of Buddhist disciples made up of an eclectic group of European converts, whose lives he ruled with an iron fist. He made several attempts to reinject himself into European life, first by visiting Europe with a plan to open Buddhist monasteries for European converts, and later on by trying to insert himself into the diplomatic processes thrown up by the various flare-ups between the Japanese and Chinese in China. In 1938, five years after the death of the thirteenth Dalai Lama, Trebitsch claimed to have experienced a vision in which he was told he was the new incarnation of the Dalai Lama. His ‘vision’ was well timed. The previous year he had publicly declared his support for the Imperial Japanese after the Japanese army occupied most of Shanghai. It was a politically savvy move, as the Japanese would retain control of Shanghai until 1945. In recognition of his vociferous support – most Chinese Buddhists loathed the Japanese – the Japanese government formally recognized him as the
Dalai Lama, although in practice their recognition had very little meaning, as the Tibetan controlled religion rejected his claim outright. When the Second World War broke out Trebitsch offered to help the Nazis win the war against the Allies, claiming to have intelligence information that would benefit their war aims. Perhaps he was motivated by his lifelong obsession with the British, which over the years had vacillated between visceral hatred and a longing to return to England. But nothing came of his flirtation with the Nazis, and as the war progressed he faded into complete obscurity. When Trebitsch died following an operation on his stomach, on October 6, 1943, his death didn’t merit a mention in any of the hundreds of newspapers who had reported on him during his lifetime. Some would speculate that he was poisoned by the Nazis, or by allied sympathizers who despised him for his relationship with the Japanese and the Germans, or by Buddhist extremists who loathed him for his claim to be the Dalai Lama, or by Jews who were disgusted by how he gave them such a bad name. Or maybe he just died from a stomach ailment, followed by a poorly executed medical operation. We will never know.
Yitzchak Trebitsch, Ignatius Timotheus Trebitsch, Ignatz Timothy Trebitsch-Lincoln, Abbot Chau Kung – and that’s just a list of his real names! Over the years this tempestuous chameleon employed dozens of aliases, and adopted the cultures and religions of almost every place he visited. He learned to speak a dozen or more languages fluently, and wrote copiously in most of them. He was involved in the politics of countless countries over many decades, and his name was recognized by millions across the developed world. He was notorious for his association with agitation, intrigue, espionage and the shady world of those individuals who have no substance, and no morals. And yet, despite his notoriety, he left no lasting imprint, no legacy, and no achievements. His was a life of all wind and no waves. Restless, unhappy, unsuccessful and ultimately a loser, the orthodox boy from Hungary who ended his life as a Buddhist monk in Shanghai remains an enigma to all those who have encountered the story of his peripatetic existence. (I am indebted to Professor Bernard Wasserstein, whose book ‘The Secret Lives of Trebitsch Lincoln’, Yale University Press, 1988, provided me with the majority of the information and research material for the fourpart biographical series on Trebitsch)
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