Staël, Germaine de (zhĕrmĕn` də stäl), 1766–1817, French-Swiss woman of letters, whose full name was Anne Louise Germaine Necker, baronne de Staël-Holstein. Born in Paris, the daughter of Jacques and Suzanne Necker, she early absorbed the intellectual and political atmosphere of her mother's salon. In 1786 she married Baron Staël-Holstein, a Swedish diplomat. Though moderately sympathizing with the French Revolution, she left France in 1792. Returning to Paris under the Directory, she made her salon a powerful political and intellectual center. She separated, amicably, from her husband and became intimately associated with Benjamin Constant. Her love life remained, to the end, both complicated and unconventional. In 1803 her spirited opposition to Bonaparte caused her exile from Paris. Mme de Staël retired to her estate at Coppet, on the Lake of Geneva, where she attracted a brilliant circle. Already the author of a successful novel, Delphine (1802), and of a study of the influence of social conditions on literature (De la littérature considérée dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales, 1800), she was inspired by a trip to Italy to write the novel Corinne (1807). Her principal work, De l'Allemagne (1810), was the result of a tour through Germany. Napoleon, who resented the book as an invidious comparison between German and French culture and mores, ordered the destruction of the entire first edition (1811) on the ground that it was "un-French." Threatened by Napoleon's police, Mme de Staël fled to Russia and England; in 1815 she returned to Coppet. Republished, De l'Allemagne tremendously influenced European thought and letters, which became imbued with Mme de Staël's enthusiasm for German romanticism. Among her other works are Considérations sur les principaux événements de la Révolution française (1818) and the autobiographical Dix Années d'exil (1818). There are English translations of most of her works.

Bibliography

See her correspondence (tr. 1970); her memoirs (new ed. 1968); biography by C. Herold (1964); and M. Levaillant, The Passionate Exiles (1958, repr. 1971).

Staël, Germaine de

orig. Anne-Louise-Germaine Necker, Baroness de Staël-Holstein known as Madame de Staël

Germaine de Staël, portrait by Jean-Baptiste Isabey, 1810; in the Louvre, Paris

(credit: Giraudon/Art Resource, New York)

(born April 22, 1766, Paris, France—died July 14, 1817, Paris) French-Swiss writer, political propagandist, and salon hostess. She early gained a reputation as a lively wit. She first became known for Letters on the Works and the Character of J.-J. Rousseau (1788). The most brilliant period of her career began in 1794, when she returned to Paris after the Reign of Terror; her salon, known for its literary and intellectual figures, flourished, and she published political and literary essays, notably A Treatise on the Influence of the Passions upon the Happiness of Individuals and of Nations (1796), an important document of European Romanticism. In 1803 Napoleon, who resented her opposition, had her banished from Paris, and she made the family residence in Coppet, Switz., her headquarters. Probably her most important work is Germany (1810), a serious study of German manners, literature and art, philosophy and morals, and religion. Her other writings include novels, plays, moral essays, history, and memoirs.