KRUDENER, BARBARA JULIANA, BARONESS VON (1764-1824 ) , Russian mystic, was born at Riga on Nov. 11, 1764, daughter of Otto von Vietinghoff and his wife, nee von Miinnich. At 18 she married Baron von Kriidener, a widower of 34, a dis tinguished Russian diplomatist. There were two children of the marriage, Paul and Juliette. In 1789 the baroness, who was a nervous, highly strung woman, formed a passionate attachment for a young French officer, Charles Louis de Fregeville. Her hus band declined to divorce her, and in 1798 she joined him again for a short time at Berlin where he was ambassador. His death (June 14, 1802), released her. In the meantime the baroness had been enjoying literary society at Coppet and in Paris, and, under the influence of Chateaubriand, had written her sentimental and largely autobiographical romance of Valerie. In Jan. 1804 she returned to Riga, where she underwent "conversion" under the ministrations of a Moravian shoemaker.
From the date of her conversion began her extraordinary career in the execution of her "mission" in Europe. At Konigsberg she met Queen Louise of Prussia and a peasant named Adam Muller, who revealed to her that a man would be raised up "from the north . . . from the rising of the sun" (Isa. xli., 25) to destroy Antichrist (Napoleon) and that the millennium would then begin. The baroness spent 11 years wandering over Europe before she was able to reveal to the tsar Alexander that he was the pre destined man "from the rising of the sun." Wherever she went she gathered a crowd of followers and great excitement prevailed. She was expelled from one Swiss Canton after another for seeking to persuade the peasants to flee from the wrath to come.
Madame de Kriidener achieved her famous interview with Alexander I. on June 4, 1815. She came upon him as he was brooding over an open Bible ; she preached to him for three hours, at the end of which he "found peace." "Chiliasm," as the
new cult was called, established itself in the most powerful court in Europe, and Madame de KrUdener, who followed Alexander to Heidelberg and Paris, found herself a political force and one of the moving spirits in the conception of the Holy Alliance (q.v.). The proclamation which was to herald the reign of peace was issued on Sept. 26, signed by the sovereigns of Russia, Austria and Prussia. Madame de KrUdener claimed, though the tsar re proved her indiscretion, that the idea was hers. She expected to travel back to Russia by way of Switzerland in the tsar's com pany. But he had by this time recovered from his infatuation and left her behind in Switzerland.
She was not able to return to St. Petersburg until 1820, when she urged the tsar to take up arms for the Greeks in their war of independence. Alexander's reply was a letter asking her to leave St. Petersburg. She went to the Crimea, where Princess Galitzin had established a pietistic colony. There, at Karasu Bazar, she died on Dec. 25, 1824. The misery of the colony of peasants who had "fled from the wrath to come" seems to have opened her eyes. She said: "The good I have done will endure; the evil I have done the mercy of God will blot out." The most authoritative study on Madame de Kriidener is E. Milhlenbeck, Etude sur les origines de la Sainte-Alliance (Paris, 1909), with numerous references to original authorities. See also C. Ford, Life and Letters of Mme. Kriidener (contains bibliog.) (1893), and Lives by P. J. G. Eynard (2 vols., Paris, 5849), Lacroix (Paris, 1880, and Turquan (Paris, 190o).