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Krüdener, Barbara Juliana von 1764-1824
Russian mystic

She was born in Riga, and briefly married to Baron von Krüdener, Russian ambassador at Venice, but they separated in 1785, and from 1789 she lived in Riga, St Petersburg and Paris. She published a remarkable novel, Valérie (1803), supposed to be autobiographical, then gave herself up to an exaggerated mysticism. Expelled in 1817-18 from Switzerland and Germany, and repulsed by her former admirer, Emperor Alexander I, she retired to her paternal estates near Riga, where she entered into relations with the Moravian Brethren.