Champion of individualism and humanism during the Romantic period in Germany, Rahel Varnhagen became famous for her literary salon in Berlin during the Napoleonic era. In her day she was considered the German Madame de Staël. She was perceived as a pioneer of women's intellectual emancipation by her contemporaries, including Goethe, Heinrich Heine, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher. Her some ten thousand letters, according to Jean Paul "possibly the greatest treasure of our times," are the most lively documentation of the circles in which she moved. Imbued with social and intellectual concerns, the letters reveal a soaring undaunted spirit that could not be quelled by the dual dilemma of her restricted status as a woman and a Jew. As a woman, albeit financially comfortable, she could not acquire a formal education, a profession, or a public position. Nor could she aspire to the...