Juliette.[1] At the end of the year she returned with her daughters and Empeytaz to Baden, a fateful migration.
The empress Elizabeth of Russia was now at Karlsruhe; and she and the pietist ladies of her entourage hoped that the emperor Alexander might find at the hands of Madame de Krüdener the peace which an interview with Jung-Stilling had failed to bring him. The baroness herself wrote urgent letters to Roxane de Stourdza, sister of the tsar’s Rumanian secretary, begging her to procure an interview. There seemed to be no result; but the correspondence paved the way for the opportunity which a strange chance was to give her of realizing her ambition. In the spring of 1815 the baroness was settled at Schlüchtern, a piece of Baden territory enclavé in Württemberg, busy persuading the peasants to sell all and fly from the wrath to come. Near this, at Heilbronn, the emperor Alexander established his headquarters on the 4th of June. That very night the baroness sought and obtained an interview. To the tsar, who had been brooding alone over an open Bible, her sudden arrival seemed an answer to his prayers; for three hours the prophetess preached her strange gospel, while the most powerful man in Europe sat, his face buried in his hands, sobbing like a child; until at last he declared that he had “found peace.” At the tsar’s request she followed him to Heidelberg and later to Paris, where she was lodged at the Hôtel Montchenu, next door to the imperial headquarters in the Elysée Palace. A private door connected the establishments, and every evening the emperor went to take part in the prayer-meetings conducted by the baroness and Empeytaz. Chiliasm seemed to have found an entrance into the high councils of Europe, and the baroness von Krüdener had become a political force to be reckoned with. Admission to her religious gatherings was sought by a crowd of people celebrated in the intellectual and social world; Châteaubriand came, and Benjamin Constant, Madame Récamier, the duchesse de Bourbon, and Madame de Duras. The fame of the wonderful conversion, moreover, attracted other members of the chiliastic fraternity, among them Fontaines, who brought with him the prophetess Marie Kummer.
In this religious forcing-house the idea of the Holy Alliance germinated and grew to rapid maturity. On the 26th of September the portentous proclamation, which was to herald the opening of a new age of peace and goodwill on earth, was signed by the sovereigns of Russia, Austria and Prussia (see Holy Alliance; and Europe: History). Its authorship has ever been a matter of dispute. Madame de Krüdener herself claimed that she had suggested the idea, and that Alexander had submitted the draft for her approval. This is probably correct, though the tsar later, when he had recovered his mental equilibrium, reproved her for her indiscretion in talking of the matter. His eyes, indeed, had begun to be opened before he left Paris, and Marie Kummer was the unintentional cause. At the very first séance the prophetess, whose revelations had been praised by the baroness in extravagant terms, had the evil inspiration to announce in her trance to the emperor that it was God’s will that he should endow the religious colony to which she belonged! Alexander merely remarked that he had received too many such revelations before to be impressed. The baroness’s influence was shaken but not destroyed, and before he left Paris Alexander gave her a passport to Russia. She was not, however, destined to see him again.
She left Paris on the 22nd of October 1815, intending to travel to St Petersburg by way of Switzerland. The tsar, however, offended by her indiscretions and sensible of the ridicule which his relations with her had brought upon him, showed little disposition to hurry her arrival. She remained in Switzerland, where she presently fell under the influence of an unscrupulous adventurer named J. G. Kellner. For months Empeytaz, an honest enthusiast, struggled to save her from this man’s clutches, but in vain. Kellner too well knew how to flatter the baroness’s inordinate vanity: the author of the Holy Alliance could be none other than the “woman clothed with the sun” of Rev. xii. 1. 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 August 1817, she set out for her estate in Livonia, accompanied by Kellner and a remnant of the elect.
The emperor Alexander having opened the Crimea to German and Swiss chiliasts in search of a land of promise, the baroness’s son-in-law Berckheim and his wife now proceeded thither to help establish the new colonies. In November 1820 the baroness at last went herself to St Petersburg, where Berckheim was lying ill. She was there when the news arrived of Ypsilanti’s invasion of the Danubian principalities, which opened the war of Greek independence. She at once proclaimed the divine mission of the tsar to take up arms on behalf of Christendom. Alexander, however, had long since exchanged her influence for that of Metternich, and he was far from anxious to be forced into even a holy war. To the baroness’s overtures he replied in a long and polite letter, the gist of which was that she must leave St Petersburg at once. In 1823 the death of Kellner, whom to the last she regarded as a saint, was a severe blow to her. Her health was failing, but she allowed herself to be persuaded by Princess Galitzin to accompany her to the Crimea, where she had established a Swiss colony. Here, at Karasu Bazar, she died on the 25th of December 1824.
Sainte-Beuve said of Madame de Krüdener: “Elle avait un immense besoin que le monde s’occupât d’elle . . . ; l’amour propre, toujours l’amour propre . . . !” A kindlier epitaph might, perhaps, be written in her own words, uttered after the revelation of the misery of the Crimean colonists had at last opened her eyes: “The good that I have done will endure; the evil that I have done (for how often have I not mistaken for the voice of God that which was no more than the result of my imagination and my pride) the mercy of God will blot out.”
Much information about Madame de Krüdener, coloured by the author’s views, is to be found in H. L. Empeytaz’s Notice sur Alexandre, empereur de Russie (2nd ed., Paris, 1840). The Vie de Madame de Krudener (2 vols., Paris, 1849), by the Swiss banker and Philhellene J. G. Eynard, was long the standard life and contains much material, but is far from authoritative. In English appeared the Life and Letters of Madame de Krüdener, by Clarence Ford (London, 1893). The most authoritative study, based on a wealth of original research, is E. Muhlenbeck’s Étude sur les origines de la Sainte-Alliance (Paris, 1909), in which numerous references are given. (W. A. P.)
KRUG, WILHELM TRAUGOTT (1770–1842), German philosopher
and author, was born at Radis in Prussia on the 22nd of
June 1770, and died at Leipzig on the 12th of January 1842.
He studied at Wittenberg under Reinhard and Jehnichen, at
Jena under Reinhold, and at Göttingen. From 1801 to 1804 he
was professor of philosophy at Frankfort-on-the-Oder, after
which he succeeded Kant in the chair of logic and metaphysics
at the university of Königsberg. From 1809 till his death he
was professor of philosophy at Leipzig. He was a prolific writer
on a great variety of subjects, in all of which he excelled as a
popularizer rather than as an original thinker. In philosophy
his method was psychological; he attempted to explain the
Ego by examining the nature of its reflection upon the facts of
consciousness. Being is known to us only through its presentation
in consciousness; consciousness only in its relation to
Being. Both Being and Consciousness, however, are immediately
known to us, as also the relation existing between them. By this
Transcendental Synthesis he proposed to reconcile Realism
and Idealism, and to destroy the traditional difficulty between
transcendental, or pure, thought and “things in themselves.”
Apart from the intrinsic value of his work, it is admitted that
it had the effect of promoting the study of philosophy and of
stimulating freedom of thought in religion and politics. His
principal works are: Briefe über den neuesten Idealismus
- ↑ Berckheim had been French commissioner of police in Mainz and had abandoned his post in 1813.
