Suzanne Curchod
Suzanne Curchod (married Necker, born June 2, 1737 in Crassier , Switzerland ; † May 15, 1794 in Lausanne , Switzerland), also Madame Necker , was a writer and an important Parisian Salonnière of the Enlightenment . She was the wife of the Franco-Swiss banker and politician Jacques Necker and mother of the writer Germaine de Staël .
Life and work
The highly educated daughter of a poor Reformed clergyman met Necker as an educator in Paris after she was briefly engaged to Edward Gibbon in 1757 . After her marriage to Necker (1764), her house soon became a meeting place for important figures of the Enlightenment , as well as people from the royal court and politicians of the Ancien Régime . The other salonies Madame Geoffrin and Madame du Deffand as well as Swiss friends were also among the visitors . She herself was one of the regulars in the ' philosophes ' salon , which Madame Helvétius entertained.
As Necker under the new King Louis XVI. Having become Minister of Finance, she turned her attention to the prison and hospital system and founded a hospital in Paris in 1778. Later she was also active as an author and wrote, among other things, a memorandum on the hospital system Mémoire sur l'Etablissement des hospices , 1786 and the writing Réflexions sur le divorce (Considerations on divorce), 1794. Her suggestions should have contributed to the improvement of health conditions.
After Necker's fall as short-term Prime Minister (1789) and in view of the increasing revolutionary turmoil in France, she withdrew with him to her castle in Switzerland.
Works
- Mémoire sur l'établissement des hospices
- Des inhumations précipitées , 1790
- Réflexions sur le divorce , Lausanne 1794
- Mélanges (1798–1801)
literature
- Gabriel Paul Othenin de Cléron d'Haussonville : Le Salon de Madame Necker . 2 volumes. - Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1882
- Antonius Lux (ed.): Great women of world history. A thousand biographies in words and pictures . Sebastian Lux Verlag , Munich 1963, p. 355
Web links
- Valérie Cossy: Suzanne Necker. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
Individual evidence
- ^ Suzanne Necker: Valérie Cossy. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . November 2, 2010 , accessed July 6, 2019 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Curchod, Suzanne |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Necker, Suzanne |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Swiss writer and the wife of the French finance minister Jacques Necker |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 2, 1737 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Crassier , Switzerland |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 15, 1794 |
| Place of death | Lausanne , Switzerland |