Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein, commonly known as Madame de Staël, was a prominent philosopher, woman of letters, and political theorist in both Parisian and Genevan intellectual circles. She was the daughter of banker and French finance minister Jacques Necker and Suzanne Curchod, a respected salonhostess. Throughout her life, she held a moderate stance during the tumultuous periods of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era, persisting until the time of the French Restoration.
"Madame de Staël" (1813)
Germaine Necker by Carmontelle
The Swedish Embassy, Hôtel de Ségur, later Hôtel de Salm-Dyck
On 4 and 5 May 1789 Germaine de Staël watched the assembly of the Estates-General in Versailles, where she met the young Mathieu de Montmorency.
Jacques Necker was a Genevan banker and statesman who served as finance minister for Louis XVI. He was a reformer, but his innovations sometimes caused great discontent. Necker was a constitutional monarchist, a political economist, and a moralist, who wrote a severe critique of the new principle of equality before the law.
Portrait by Joseph Duplessis, c. 1781
Suzanne Curchod, Necker's wife
Germaine Necker by Carmontelle
Château de Madrid, Necker's home in Neuilly-sur-Seine