Book: Germany

Overview
Published in 1813 after Napoleon suppressed its first edition, Madame de Stael’s Germany is a sweeping portrait of German culture intended to introduce French and European readers to a world she believed had been overlooked. Blending travel impressions with criticism and moral philosophy, she presents Germany as a nation defined less by political power than by inner life: imagination, reflection, and the freedom of thought. The book champions modern Romanticism against rigid classicist taste, proposing a new standard for literature and art grounded in spiritual depth, historical consciousness, and individual sentiment.

Design and Approach
Organized into four broad parts, the work moves from national character and social customs to literature and the arts, then to philosophy and morals, and finally to religion. The method is comparative without being chauvinistic. De Stael measures German habits against French and Italian models, drawing contrasts between sociable wit and inward meditation, polished form and imaginative audacity. She repeatedly returns to a key value she calls enthusiasm, a generous, elevating energy that links metaphysical inquiry, poetic invention, and moral courage.

The German Character
German life is described as domestic, studious, and sincere. Conversation favors depth over sparkle; friendships are lasting; and education is central, cultivated in universities and small courts such as Weimar. The language, less crystalline than French, is praised for its philosophical precision and poetic suggestiveness. She notes a national tendency to melancholy and reverie, yet sees in these traits a moral seriousness that resists frivolity and despotism. Women are portrayed not as ornaments of salons but as moral and intellectual companions, vital to literary culture and family life.

Literature and the Arts
De Stael introduces French readers to Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, and Herder as architects of a modern poetic culture. She admires Goethe’s breadth and dramatic daring, Schiller’s moral grandeur, Lessing’s critical clarity, and Herder’s historical imagination. German drama rejects the strict French rules to embrace Shakespeare’s vital irregularity, aiming not at decorum but at truth and passion. Poetry draws strength from medieval legend, folk song, and national history, recovering the marvelous and the sublime. Music is deemed Germany’s supreme art, with Handel, Haydn, and Mozart exemplifying the fusion of structure and feeling that Romantic aesthetics extols; painting and sculpture, she suggests, lag behind literature and music in national excellence. She distinguishes the romantic, modern art nourished by Christianity, chivalry, and interiority, from the classical, derived from antiquity’s harmony and clarity.

Philosophy and Religion
A pioneering guide to German thought, the book interprets Kant’s moral autonomy, Fichte’s self-positing subject, and Schelling’s attempts to reconcile nature and mind. While concise rather than technical, these sketches argue that German philosophy elevates duty, freedom, and the inner life, countering both cynicism and fatalism. Religion, especially Protestantism, is depicted as a source of personal conscience and spiritual self-examination. She values tolerance and the union of faith with freedom, criticizing superstition and political manipulation of belief while honoring sincere piety and the ethical imagination it sustains.

Politics, Culture, and Legacy
Although not a constitutional treatise, the book’s moral argument is political. By celebrating the independence of mind fostered by letters, philosophy, and religion, de Stael condemns arbitrary power and cultural uniformity. Germany’s lack of political unity appears less a defect than a shield for intellectual variety, a reminder that national greatness can be measured by ideas as much as armies. The portrait culminates in a cosmopolitan plea: nations must exchange forms of excellence, French clarity, German depth, Italian grace, to renew European civilization. Germany stands as both subject and symbol of that renewal, a defense of liberty of spirit that became foundational for European Romanticism.