Birgit Urmson has succeeded brilliantly in depicting the many colorful, often contradictory facets of Germaine de Staël’s personality. We first meet her in her Paris residence, the perfect society hostess, daughter of Jacques Necker, the powerful minister of finance, famous authoress, patroness of the arts, but also a fervent advocate of controversial changes in society – free speech, women’s emancipation, free love unhampered by wedlock.