From outlaw to spiritual healer
Alexander Golandsky was a criminal biker and cocaine dealer. Then he changed his life radically.
By Finn Winkler, Kim Zeidler, Utkarsh Singh
In his former life, Alexander once wanted to throw a person into a fire. He was still a criminal biker at the time and a member of one of the notorious one-percenter clubs. He remembers the evening when, high on LSD, he thought the woman he was talking to was a witch who was about to curse him. In a panic he pushed her into the fire – her trousers caught light and she screamed. Fortunately she was largely unhurt. Today Alexander knows how dangerous and irresponsible that was. His drug trip could have had terrible consequences, and it was only by sheer luck that things turned out as well as they did.
Alexander has spent his whole life in the house he grew up in. Although his father disinherited him, he still got the house through his compulsory share of the inheritance. Many of the windows are broken now, and the shutters often stay down. Little light gets into the rooms, and the traces of an eventful life are visible on Alexander’s face. Even so, he is happy to take anyone interested on a journey through his past. He talks openly about his biker life, which began when he was 15.
At the end of the 1970s Alexander met a member of a biker club in the school playground. ‘And that was the end of school,’ he recalls. He soon started dealing cocaine and made a small fortune. ‘Once you’ve got 3,000 or 4,000 marks in your pocket, you stop going to school,’ he says today. From then on his life revolved around quick deals, drugs and violence. There was the motorbike rally in Frankfurt where he stayed drunk for three days until he no longer knew how to get home. ‘Take a sniff of this and you’ll be fine again,’ a friend advised him – speed. Drunk and high on speed, he set off for home.
Once you’ve got 3,000 or 4,000 marks in your pocket, you stop going to school.
Fights were part of everyday life too, especially when several biker clubs met. They were about women or simply about feuds. Beer benches and fire extinguishers flew through the air. Once Alexander only avoided a brawl because he happened to have downed thirty glasses of schnapps shortly before – his club brothers had already carried him out of harm’s way.
Alexander is amazed that he is still alive at all. Many of his friends from back then are dead. ‘Reaching 55 or 60 is about as good as it gets there,’ he says. Alexander himself now has diabetes, and a few years ago he almost lost his foot to sepsis. ‘If I hadn’t changed my life in my mid-thirties, I’d be dead by now too,’ he says thoughtfully, looking back on his old companions and his former way of life.
If I hadn’t changed my life in my mid-thirties, I’d be dead by now too.
At some point in the 1980s, Alexander decided to change his life. ‘I didn’t want drugs to control me any more,’ he says. ‘And when I say I’m not taking drugs any more, then I’m not. My word is 100 per cent.’ He has been clean for more than 30 years, even though he did relapse briefly.
His spiritual journey began when he happened to read an article about palm reading in a women’s magazine. What started as an experiment quickly turned into an intense preoccupation with spirituality. Alexander read the palms of homeless people and drug addicts. His biker friends, too, secretly wanted him to predict their future, even though they made fun of him at first. Soon he was delving deeper and deeper into spiritual practices.
The high point of his spiritual development was his ordination as a voodoo priest in Berlin. For 2,000 marks he was initiated in the kitchen of a woman who chopped the heads off chickens and smeared the blood on his face. ‘The spirit of voodoo must enter your body,’ she said. Since then Alexander has called himself ‘The Man Who Knows’ and offers spiritual consultations in his family home.
On his website Alexander describes himself as the most famous fortune teller in the German-speaking world. He offers palm reading, fortune telling and ghost hunting, appears as a shaman and medium, and even advertises breast enlargement through hypnosis. His house is full of spiritual symbols, crosses and statues of Jesus. In a specially furnished exorcism room he helps his clients drive out demons.
Over the years Alexander gained a certain fame. He has appeared on RTL, MDR and TV Oberfranken, is writing his memoirs and posts dramatic videos for his Instagram followers. ‘I’m busy all day,’ he says. But one highlight is still missing: an appearance on Big Brother would be just the thing. ‘So I can get a quick kick out of life again. Like a line of coke, only without the drugs.’
