Barbara von Krüdener

Beate Barbara Juliane Freifrau von Krüdener (; ), often called by her formal French name, Madame de Krüdener, was a Baltic German religious mystic, author, and Pietist Lutheran theologian who exerted influence on wider European Protestantism, including the Swiss Reformed Church and the Moravian Church, and whose ideas influenced Tsar Alexander I of Russia.

Family background Baroness von Krüdener was born in Riga, Governorate of Livonia. Her father, Baron Otto Hermann von Vietinghoff genannt Scheel, who had fought as a colonel in Catherine II's wars, was one of the two councillors for Livonia and a man of immense wealth. He was a man of rationalistic views and a leading freemason. Her mother, the Countess Anna Ulrika von Münnich, was a granddaughter of Burkhard Christoph von Münnich, a celebrated Russian field marshal, and a strict Lutheran.

Barbe-Julie de Vietinghoff, better known as Madame von Krüdener (Mme. de Krüdener) later in life, but, as a child, referred to as Juliana, was one of five children born into the wealthy Vietinghoff family.

Father Her father, Otto Hermann von Vietinghoff-Scheel, had started accruing his wealth from a young age, for as a young man, he proved to possess a knack for business. With his high ambitions, he entered into commercial enterprises that became highly successful. Some of his treasures included grand properties in Kosse (present-day Viitina, Estonia) and Marienburg, as well as his grandiose townhouse in Riga, where Barbe-Julie was born. Although he was never assigned an official title, he enjoyed the official rank as a privy counselor and as a senator and "would exclaim with pride 'I am Vietinghoff', and behave with all the arrogance of a great noble".

Mother Barbe-Julie's mother, Anna Ulrika von Münnich von Vietinghoff-Scheel, was herself born into nobility. Her grandfather, the famed Field Marshal Burkhard Christoph von Münnich, despite having been exiled for many years in Siberia, had led many successful campaigns against the Tartars and the Turks. — Leipzig and Switzerland. In 1794 her husband became ambassador at Madrid. In 1800 her husband became ambassador in Berlin, and she joined him there. But the stiff court society of Prussia was irksome to her; money difficulties continued; and by way of climax, the murder of the Tsar Paul, in whose favor Baron Krüdener had stood high, made the position of the ambassador extremely precarious. The baroness seized the occasion to leave for the baths of Teplitz, whence she wrote to her husband that the doctors had ordered her to winter in the south. He died on June 14, 1802, without ever having seen her again. By him she was instructed in the chiliastic faith and in the mysteries of the supernatural world. Then, hearing that a certain pastor in the Vosges, Jean Frédéric Fontaines, was prophesying and working miracles, she determined to go to him. On June 5, 1801, accordingly, she arrived at the Protestant parsonage of Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines, accompanied by her daughter Juliette, her stepdaughter Sophie and a Russian valet. whose visions, carefully calculated for her own purposes, became the oracle of the divine mysteries for the baroness. Under this influence, she believed more firmly than ever in the approaching millennium and her own mission to proclaim it. Her rank, her reckless charities, and her exuberant eloquence produced a great effect on the simple country folk; and when, in 1809, it was decided to found a colony of the elect in order to wait for the coming of the Lord, many wretched peasants sold or distributed all they possessed and followed the baroness and Fontaines into Württemberg, where the settlement was established at Catharinenplaisir and the château of Bonnigheim, only to be dispersed (May 1) by an unsympathetic government.

Further wanderings followed: to Lichtenthal near Baden; to Karlsruhe and the congenial society of pietistic princesses; to Riga, where she was present at the deathbed of her mother (January 24, 1811); then back to Karlsruhe. The influence of Fontaines, to whom she had been "spiritually married" (Madame Fontaines being content with the part of Martha in the household, so long as the baroness's funds lasted), had now waned, and she had fallen under that of Johann Kaspar Wegelin (1766–1833), a pious linen-draper of Strasbourg, who taught her the sweetness of complete annihilation of the will and mystic death. Her preaching and her indiscriminate charities now began to attract curious crowds from afar; and her appearance everywhere was accompanied by an epidemic of visions and prophesyings, which culminated in the appearance in 1811 of the comet, a sure sign of the approaching end. At the end of the year she returned with her daughters and Empeytaz to Baden, a fateful migration.

She wandered with Kellner from place to place, proclaiming her mission, working miracles, persuading her converts to sell all and follow her. Crowds of beggars and rapscallions of every description gathered wherever she went, supported by the charities squandered from the common fund. She became a nuisance to the authorities and a menace to the peace; Württemberg had expelled her, and the example was followed by every Swiss canton she entered in turn. At last, in May 1818, she set out for her estate in Kosse, Livonia (now Viitina, Estonia), accompanied by Kellner and a remnant of the elect. |Sainte-Beuve (1852).

A kindlier epitaph written in her own words, uttered after the revelation of the misery of the Crimean colonists had at last opened her eyes:

Clarence Ford wrote in a Victorian biography:

Works Valérie, ou, Lettres de Gustave de Linar à Ernst de G…, Paris, Henrichs, 1804. available onGallica archive. Écrits intimes et prophétiques de Madame de Krüdener, Paris, Éditions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1975. Worldcat. Le Camp de Vertus, ou la Grande revue de l'armée russe, Lyon, Guyot frères, 1815. Available on Gallica archive.

Books about her Madame de Krüdener et son temps, 1764-1824.Paris, Plon, 1961. . Lady of the Holy Alliance. Ernest John Knapton: New York, Columbia University Press, 1939. .