De Staël-Holstein

Anne-Louise Germaine Necker, baronness
(Paris, 1766 - Paris 1817)

The greatest woman of her period. The first great political woman. Liberal, courageous, she resisted Napoleon unceasingly.

The life of Madame de Stael is doubtlessly her own best novel, curious about everything, promoting a spirit of tolerance and fidelity to the ideals of the illuminati, she is one of the most enlightened persons of the nineteenth century. Her intelligence gained her entry into otherwise exclusively masculine political circles. Even more, she herself organized in Paris, in Switzerland, even throughout Europe resistance to the imperial power, the negation of all the liberties she defended.

Daughter of the banker Necker, minister of Louis XVI, she passed her childhood in an intelligent, moderate, and ambitious environment. In the salon of her mother the young girl's spirit glowed. At the age of twenty she married a man sixteen years older, Baron of Stael-Holstein, Swedish ambassador to France. She was a great reader of Rousseau and imbued with the ideals of the illuminati; she accepted with joy the Revolution. However, beginning in 1792 her position became untenable; she supported the constitutional monarchy and turned her back on the republicans and the nobility.

Following the September massacres she fled to Coppet (Switzerland) with her father, but she remained faithful to republican ideas, as is shown by the work which she wrote in 1798 but did not publish, "Of the present circumstances which may end the revolution and of the principles on which should be founded the republic in France."
She began to defend a sort of English parliament to which she would remain faithful all her life. She advocated educating everyone and giving them complete political power. In fact, Madame de Stael is the first woman officially recognized as a political philosopher.

The government of thermidor reassured her; she returned to Paris. Could she finally enjoy an active role in the government which followed the reign of terror? Someone powerful mistrusted that woman. Her tolerance was suspected, particularly if she taught in her salon, the opposition could be kept alive. The Directorate preferred to forbid her Paris. She came there only for short visits.

In 1797 she met the victorious general of the Italian campaign. She wanted Bonaparte to be the liberal who would make liberty, her liberty, triumph after the checks of the Revolution.

Bonaparte was put out of countenance by that woman with ideas so contrary to his own. He did not know how to react to her, remained ambiguous and handled her as if he senses a danger which he could not see.

Madame de Stael awoke from her illusions after the promulgation of the constitution on the year VIII; she had to continue her promotion of her forbidden political philosophy secretly, for little by little her arguments turned into open opposition. Her salon became the gathering place of malcontents. The government became disquieted. A woman, the seduction she exercised on those around her-- her affair with Benjamin Constant was known by everyone surrounding Bonaparte-- a salon, a significant influence, all were reasons to distrust her.

The ideas of Madame de Stael spread rapidly. A new book, published in 1800, on literature considered in its connection with social institutions, a treatise on the evolution of societies, of the types of literature. The absolute right of the writer to her liberty was an idea which the first consul could not accept and which made him fearful. It was too much; he had to forbid the author to publish. Bonaparte began to see everywhere around him the influence of Madame de Stael. His chief rivals, among them Bernadotte, didn't they frequent her salon?

Delphine, a novel she published in 1802, was a beehive of social, political, and religious ideas which exasperated him. The first consul let Madame de Stael know that her presence in the capital was undesirable; when she remained there, on October 15, 1803, he ordered her to stay at least forty leagues from Paris until the tear 1810.
Madame de Stael left the country. The hostility Napoleon showed toward her made her famous. The courts in Germany gave her a reception fit for a head of state.
Her meeting with the greatest German intellectuals was decisive; Goethe, Schiller, Schlegel (who became the tutor of young Augustus Stael, her son) were her friends. Little by little the "group of Coppet", which dated from the first exile in Switzerland, grew considerably larger. Madame Recamier joined it. The different members came from quite different horizons. It was in this salon that the very idea of the plurality of nations, a concept so important later on, was forged. The cosmopolitanism of the illuminati was put into practice in the ideal setting of Coppet.

Following threats which became more and more concrete Madame de Stael settled in Germany in 1808 and began to write again. In 1810 she completed "Germany". She returned to Paris incognito to have the book published. Fouche had the complete edition seized. The two thousand copies were burned, a terrible blow for the writer. It would not be published until three years later, in London. Meanwhile, she was ordered to reside in Coppet, was closely watched, was forbidden to publish anything whatsoever. Napoleon even had someone write to Schlegel forbidding him to see Madame de Stael again. He prevented young Augustus from entering the Polytechnical School.

In 1812, after having married the young Swiss officer de Rocca she fled. For a long time she had dreamed of England, the only country which in her eyes was capable of embodying true liberty, but she had to change her plans. She reached Vienna, then Russia. In Russia the authoress was warmly received by Pouchkine on the same day the Great Army crossed the Niemen. At the end of September she reached Stockholm, where she visited Bernadotte, her friend of long standing. He had became hereditary prince of Sweden and the regent of the kingdom. The fight against the emperor took on a new dimension. The object, to preserve the spirit of the illuminati. Everywhere Madame de Stael tried to raise the ardor of the enemies of Napoleon.

In London she met the future King Louis XVIII, in whom she wanted to see the man capable of realizing the ideal constitutional monarchy. Clear-sighted, she could perceive the disastrous influence which the arrogant emigres would have on the king.

After the Restoration she settled permanently in France. The end of her life was occupied in editing "Considerations of the French Revolution" (1818), an opus of synthesis and reflection. These considerations began a manner, that of an active romanticism which is opposite to a romanticism of regrets and nostalgia; the perfectibility of society, that eternal theme, in it tirelessly promoted.