By Marcellous L. JONES


Veruschka is the one multi-syllable name by which one of the world's first supermodels became known. A predecessor of Linda Evangelista, she is the original $10,000-a-day girl. Mysterious, beautiful, aristocratic, introverted and elegant, she was a true supermodel. The legend, like the real life woman still remains an enigma.

Veruschka was born, the Countess Vera Gottliebe Anna von Lehndorff on May 14, 1939 in her family's chateau in Königsberg, East Prussia (Germany). The home had 100 rooms and had been in her family for centuries along with the surrounding grounds of their estate. Today, it is part of the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.

In 1944, Veruschka's father, the Count Heinrich von Lehndorff-Steinort, was hanged for his involvement in July 1944 plot to assassinate the Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler. The Count was executed in Berlin, and the family chateau was fully confiscated and used as the headquarters of the Nazi's Wehrmacht. The count had become a key member of the German resistance after witnessing atrocities committed against Jewish children such as beatings and killings. When the Gestapo came to arrest him, the Count did indeed escape, but came back to give himself up upon seeing Vera's mother arrested with machine guns pointed to her head. He then escaped again to the forest from the armoured car that was transporting him to Berlin, only to give himself up once more to protect his family. He was executed in Berlin on July 20, 1944 in a makeshift hanging during which he was suspended from a meat hook and painfully strangled to death with a wire around his neck. ...

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