Moura Budberg
Moura Budberg , actually Maria Ignatjewna Sakrewskaja Benckendorff Budberg (* 1891 in Poltava , Russian Empire , today Ukraine ; † November 1974 ) was a Russian baroness. She was the lover of famous men like Maxim Gorky and was all her life suspected of being a spy .
Life
Moura Budberg was born the daughter of a former senator and a member of the State Council for Saint Petersburg . In 1911 she married the high-ranking diplomat Count Johann Benckendorff, with whom she lived at Jendel Castle in Jäneda , Estonia until his murder in 1919 .
After the count's death, she was briefly married to Baron Nikolai von Budberg-Bönningshausen. Before, during and after the turmoil of the Russian Revolution , she was the lover of the celebrated British secret agent Sir Robert Hamilton Bruce Lockhart , who was involved in an attempted attack on Lenin together with agent Sidney Reilly in 1918 .
Later she came to work as a secretary in the household of the Russian writer Maxim Gorky , whose lover she became. She lived with the historian and science fiction writer HG Wells in the 1930s and cared for him during the last years of his life.
For the last 20 years of her life, she was considered a dazzling and enigmatic personality on London's cultural scene. She was known to be an excessive drinker and was suspected of working for the secret service - but this has never been fully resolved. They were called the " Mata Hari of Russia".
Moura Budberg wrote the scripts for at least two films: the 1970 film “ Three Sisters ” directed by Laurence Olivier and John Sichel and the 1968 film “ The Seagull ” directed by Sidney Lumet .
Moura Budberg was the great-great-aunt of the British politician Nick Clegg , who has been party leader of the Liberal Democrats since December 2007 .
literature
- Nina Berberova : Moura: the dangerous life of the Baroness Budberg. New York: New York Review of Books 2005 ISBN 978-1-59017-137-0
Web links
- Moura Budberg in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Article in the Washington Post on May 22, 2005
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Budberg, Moura |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Benckendorff Budberg, Maria Ignatiewna Zakrewskaya (real name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Russian baroness |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1891 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Poltava , Ukraine |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 1974 |