Alexander Herzen

Philosopher, publicist, writer. Born in Moscow (1812) as the illegitimate son of Russian landowner Ivan Yakovlev (1767–1846) and sixteen-year-old Henriette Wilhelmina Luisa Haag from Stuttgart (1796–1851). Lived at the Hôtel London on the corner of Nevsky Prospekt and Admiralty Prospekt (1835) and in Apartment 21 of the Lerche House at 25 Bolshaya Morskaya Street (1840–41). Published an autobiographical story called Notes of a Young Man in Notes of the Fatherland (1840–41). Exiled to Novgorod (1841). Wrote the comparative essays Moscow and St Petersburg and Novgorod the Great and Vladimir on Klyazma. Contributed to The Contemporary and Notes of the Fatherland (1842–47). Returned to St Petersburg (1846), lived at the Panayev House on the corner of the River Fontanka Embankment and 19 Italian Street. Wrote the novel Who Is To Blame? (1846). Emigrated to London (1846), where he published such periodicals as The Polar Star and The Bell, which were officially banned, but widely read in Russia. He died of pneumonia in Paris and was buried at the Cimetière du château in Nice (1870).