Eizhen (Eugene) Fink was born on June 24, 1885 at the railway station between Vilno and Zhitomir. He did not know his Gypsy father, a potter by profession. The German mother (hence the German surname Fink - finch) died early, and the orphaned boy was raised by a Latvian family. A photographer and clairvoyant, he accurately predicted the fate of many celebrities.
The adoptive parents lived in Limbazi, where Fink worked as a teenager in the Shitsson circus. Once the horses trampled the boy, as a result of which his limbs were broken, and out of pity he was taken to his place for treatment by a doctor who, among other things, practiced hypnosis. With the appearance of the young Fink in the house of Aesculapius, the poltergeist declared himself loudly. The "noisy spirit" drummed on the walls and shook the doors of the dwelling. In 1915, Eigen left for Kharkov, where he trained as a photographer and arranged telepathic sessions in the circus.
Fink returned to Latvia in 1922 with his wife and two children and opened a photo studio in a small two-story house on Moskovskaya Street. Since he was known as an excellent photographer, he soon had his own clientele. However, the fame of the fortuneteller overshadowed the skill of the artist.
His predictions of the fate of famous people brought him imperishable fame and good income. This allowed him in the late 1920s to move to the center of Riga: first to Kalku street 12, then to the aristocratic Rainis boulevard, where he also equipped a photo studio in the second apartment in house No. 3.
Not only Latvian politicians, but also eminent foreign guests became frequent visitors to Fink's photo studio. Among them, for example, were seen the French ambassador Thurier, German ambassadors Stuve and von Kotze, British military attaché Thalgref and others. They say that Eijen Fink was able to predict the death of President Janis Cakste, the coming to power of the Italian journalist Benito Mussolini and the Latvian agronomist Karlis Ulmanis.
The poet Igor Severyanin made a great contribution to the advertising of Fink's abilities, who in 1939 published an essay entitled "The Thunderstorm in Herzegovina". It told about a visit to the Riga oracle in November 1930. Severyanin with his wife F. M. Kruut was then passing through Latvia on the road to Yugoslavia, and a doctor he knew suggested that we visit Fink.
The poet asked if their trip would be favorable. To which the clairvoyant said: “Oh, yes! Yes! Lots of success, money, fame! Wait, wait … Oh! I see a train wreck … Moans, blood … Corpses … . “He nervously, very excited, covered his eyes with his hand. And suddenly he brightened up all: “No, it did not affect you. You are alive. Didn't even get hurt. I see clearly. I see another big house. The castle is like. Also in the south. You will return from there and go there again. What a beautiful area this castle is in! Mountains, flowers, water “, - Igor Severyanin wrote.
"He was visibly going into a trance," the essay says. - I felt a surge of inspiration: the hair moved on my head, a familiar chill ran down my back. We created a rare contact. “The first person you will meet in the south will be named Alexey. Remember this. The second one you will see is Alexander. But just beware of redheads: you have no antidote against them. Beware! " Suddenly he looked at my right side. “Does it hurt? Nothing. It will do without surgery. " (I will note in parentheses that two months before this, doctors whom I knew advised me to operate on the cecum.) Naturally, all of Fink's predictions, which he made to the impressionable poet of the Silver Age, came true.
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By the mid-1930s, Fink had become a legendary clairvoyant. The soothsayer's fame was so great that the tram conductor, instead of announcing the name of the next stop, announced: "To whom to Fink, come out!" It was not easy to get to him. People took up the line early in the morning, but sometimes they left with nothing.
One of the Riga legends says that in a conversation with the owner of the largest Latvian newspaper "Jaunakas Zinias" Emilia Benjamin Fink predicted her death by starvation. The owner of the newspaper and publishing concern did not believe that she, a millionaire, could be threatened with death by the bony hand of hunger. "Benyaminsha" (as she was called behind her back in Riga) died in Stalin's camps - quite possibly from a lack of food.
However, the fortuneteller himself soon found himself there, which caused ridicule from many of his compatriots. To others, they say, he prophesies, but he gave a blunder.
"Riga Nostradamus", as he is sometimes called, died on February 6, 1958, according to legend, having predicted his death in a month. A certain Riga lawyer offered the former convict the address of a good dentist so that he could make prostheses for him, but Fink refused, saying that he would soon find himself where teeth were not needed.
Fink is buried at the Pokrovskoe cemetery in Riga. In Latvia, one of his last predictions is still remembered that the most important events for the country will occur when the year is read equally from left to right and vice versa. In 1991 the independence of Latvia was proclaimed, and in 2002 Latvia received an invitation to join the European Union and NATO.
Booker Igor
