(Historic) Marie-​Jeanne Koffmann

Marie-​Jeanne Koffmann

July 22, 1919 - July 11, 2021

Born in France, Koffmann spent most of her life in the Soviet Union, as a surgeon at Moscow hospitals and a mountaineer. She became interested in the “Snowman” mystery in the 1950s, particularly in Kabrarda (Caucasus), where she recorded hundreds of sightings of the almasty, the local variety of the Almas.

From 1948 to 1954, Koffmann was held in a gulag (Soviet labor camp) after being accused of spying for the French. Four years after her release, she was picked to be on the Soviet Union’s first official expedition to the Pamirs. She was the doctor of the Pamirs Academy of Sciences Snowman Expedition, in 1958. She published a synthesis of her fieldwork and research in the journal Archeologia.

Koffmann, Marie-Jeanne. 1991. “L’ Almasty, yeti du Caucase.” Archeologia. 269. pp. 24-43. Koffmann, Marie-Jeanne. 1992. “L’ Almasty, mode de vie d’un hominide.” Archeologia. 276. pp. 52-65.

In 1988, in the The ISC Newsletter, Summer 1988 Vol. 7, No 2, Richard Greenwell published his interview with Koffmann. Here is a link. Here is a 1993 version. In one exchange, Koffmann tells of what lead to her interest in the topic: +++ Greenwell: What first got you interested or involved in this question of unknown hominoids? What motivated you, and when did it happen?

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Koffmann: It was in 1957, when I first saw an article in the Soviet press entitled “What Is the Snowman?” It told about some of the first expeditions. The article consisted of comments by eight mountain climbers whom I knew, half of whom thought the whole idea was impossible. The other half thought that there might be something to the reports.

In March 1999, Dmitri Bayanov and Koffmann represented the Russian Society of Cryptozoology at the world cryptozoological conference in Rome and both read papers. Koffmann is a former president of the Russian Society of Cryptozoology.