different political forces. According to Essad Bey's first book, Blood and Oil in the Orient, which historians do not consider to be very reliable, the two travelled through Turkestan and Persia. Researchers have found no record of this adventurous journey except in Nussimbaum's own writings. Nussimbaum and his father returned to Baku, but when the Bolsheviks took Baku in the spring of 1920, they fled to Georgia. They stayed there until the Bolsheviks took Tiflis and Batumi. Lev Nussimbaum, as Essad Bey, wrote his first book Oel und Blut im Orient (Blood and Oil in the Orient) in German in 1929. Although he claims that his account was autobiographical, historians in Azerbaijan and Georgia discount this claim, as there are many major factual errors in the historical description. Essad Bey describes his delight when, at the age of 14, he and his father left Azerbaijan. In the final passage of the book, he writes: "At that moment, Europe began for me. The Old East was dead." They purportedly boarded a ship bound for Istanbul, where thousands of refugees had fled. Nussimbaum eventually settled in Berlin (1921–1933), where he enrolled simultaneously in high school and in Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität. He did not graduate from either school, but told people that he had received a Cand. Phil. degree. In 1926, he began writing under the pen name of Essad Bey for the literary journal Die literarische Welt (The Literary World). At least 120 articles were published under this name. By the early 1930s, Essad Bey had become a popular author throughout Western Europe, writing mainly about contemporary historical and political issues. Politically, Essad Bey was a monarchist. In 1931, he joined the German-Russian League Against Bolshevism, the members of which, Daniel Lazare remarks, "for the most part either were Nazis or soon would be". He joined the Social Monarchist Party, which advocated restoration of Germany's Hohenzollern dynasty. He also had connections to the pre-fascistic Young Russian movement, headed by Alexander Kazembek. In 1932, Essad Bey married Erika Loewendahl, daughter of shoe magnate Walter Loewendahl. The marriage failed, ending in scandal. Erika ran off in 1935 with Nussimbaum's colleague René Fülöp-Miller. Erika's parents, who were wealthy, succeeded in getting the marriage to Nussimbaum annulled in 1937. In 1938, when Nazi Germany annexed Austria, Nussimbaum fled to Italy and settled in the seacoast town of Positano. He died there of a rare blood disorder which causes