Page:EB1911 - Volume 25.djvu/772

 STADE, a town of Germany in the Prussian province of Hanover, situated on the navigable Schwinge, 35 m. above its confluence with the Elbe, 20 m. N.W. of Hamburg on the railway to Cuxhaven. Pop. (1905), 10,837. It carries on a number of small manufactures and has some shipping trade, chiefly with Hamburg, but the rise of Harburg has deposed it from its former position as the chief port of Hanover. In the neighbourhood are deposits of gypsum and salt. The fortifications, erected in 1755 and strengthened in 1816, were demolished in 1882.

According to the legend, Stade was the oldest town of the Saxons and was built in 321 Historically it cannot be traced farther back than the 10th century, when it was the capital of a line of counts. In the 13th century it passed to the archbishopric of Bremen. Subsequently entering the Hanseatic League, it rose to some commercial importance. In 1648 Stade became the capital of the principality of Bremen under the Swedes; and in 1719 it was ceded to Hanover, the fate of which it has since shared. The Prussians occupied it without resistance in 1866.

See Jobelmann and Wittpennig, Geschichte der Stadt Stade (Stade, 1898).

STADION, JOHANN PHILIPP KARL JOSEPH (1763–1824), Austrian statesman, entered the diplomatic service and rose early to a high position. In 1790–1793 he was ambassador in London. After some years of retirement he was entrusted (1800) with a mission to the Prussian court, where he endeavoured in vain to effect an alliance with Austria. He had greater success as envoy at St Petersburg, where he played a large part in the formation of the third coalition against Napoleon (1805). Notwithstanding the failure of this alliance he was made foreign minister, and in conjunction with the archduke Charles pursued a policy of quiet preparation for a fresh trial of strength with France. In 1808 he abandoned the policy of procrastination, and with the help of Metternich hastened the outbreak of a new war. The unfortunate results of the campaign of 1809 compelled his resignation, but in 1813 he was commissioned to negotiate the convention which finally overthrew Napoleon. The last ten years of his life were spent in a strenuous and partly successful attempt to reorganize the disordered finances of his country.

See A. Beer, Zehn Jahre österreichischer Politik, 1801–1810 (Leipzig, 1877); Die Finanzen Oesterreichs im 19 Jahrhundert (Prague, 1877); Krones, Zur Geschichte Oesterreichs, 1792–1816 (Gotha, 1886).

STADIUM, the Latin form of this Greek name for a standard of length, a stade=100  (about 6 ft., or 1 fathom) = 6  (100 Gr. about 101 Eng. ft.), equivalent to about 606 Eng. ft.; as being about one-eighth of the Roman mile, it is often translated by “furlong.” The course for the foot-race at (q.v.) was exactly a stade in length, and hence the name was given to the Greek foot-race and to the amphitheatre in which the races took place (see ).

STADTHOLDER (Du. stadhouder, a delegate or representative), the title of the chief magistrate of the seven states which formed the United Netherlands by the union of Utrecht in 1579. Though the word stad means a town, it has also the force of the kindred English “stead.” A stadhouder was not the governor of a “stad” or “stead” in the sense of a place or town. He was in the place, or stead, of the sovereign. The word is translated into Latin by legatus, gubernator and praefectus. The office of stadtholder is a proconsulatus, and the High German equivalent is Statthalter, a delegate. When the northern Netherlands revolted from Philip II. of Spain, who had inherited his sovereign rights from the house of Burgundy (see : History), the stadhouder passed from being the representative of an absent sovereign prince and became the chief magistrate of the states in whom the sovereignty resided. Six of the seven states forming the confederation of the United Netherlands took as their stadtholder William of Orange-Nassau, called “the Silent,” and his descendants during three generations. The seventh, Friesland, had for stadtholder William’s brother, John “the Old,” and his descendants. The younger line became stadtholders of the other states after the extinction of the elder, and were the ancestors of the present royal family of the Netherlands. Though the stadtholders of the house of Orange-Nassau were of princely rank and intermarried with the royal families of Europe, they were not sovereign princes. They exercised large administrative powers, and commanded the land and sea forces, but it was with delegated authority given them by each state in domestic affairs, and by the states-general of the confederation in all common and foreign affairs. The states-general and some of the individual states not only claimed but exercised the right of suspending the stadtholdership, as for instance after the death of William II., 1650, and of William III., 1702.

STAËL, MADAME DE. (1766–1817), French novelist and miscellaneous writer, was born at Paris on the 22nd of April 1766. Her father was the famous financier Necker, her mother Suzanne Curchod, almost equally famous as the early love of Gibbon, as the wife of Necker himself, and as the mistress of one of the most popular salons of Paris. Between mother and daughter there was, however, little sympathy. Mme Necker, despite her talents, her beauty and her fondness for philosophe society, was strictly decorous, somewhat reserved, and disposed to carry out in her daughter’s case the rigorous discipline of her own childhood. The future Mme de Staël was from her earliest years a romp, a coquette, and passionately desirous of prominence and attention. There seems moreover to have been a sort of rivalry between mother and daughter for the chief place in Necker’s affections, and it is not probable that the daughter’s love for her mother was increased by the consciousness of her own inferiority in personal charms. Mme Necker was of a most refined though somewhat lackadaisical style of beauty, while her daughter was a plain child and a plainer woman, whose sole attractions were large and striking eyes and a buxom figure. She was, however, a child of unusual intellectual power, and she began very early to write though not to publish. She is said to have written her father a letter on his famous Compte-Rendu and other matters when she was not fifteen, and to have injured her health by excessive study and intellectual excitement. But in reading all the accounts of Mme de Staël’s. life which come from herself or her intimate friends, it must be carefully remembered that she was the most distinguished and characteristic product of the period of sensibilité—the singular fashion of ultra-sentiment which required that both men and women, but especially women, should be always palpitating with excitement, steeped in melancholy, or dissolved in tears. Still, there is no doubt that her father’s dismissal from the ministry, which followed the presentation of the Compte, and the consequent removal of the family from the busy life of Paris, were beneficial to her. During part of the next few years they resided at Coppet, her father’s estate on the Lake of Geneva, which she herself made famous. But other parts were spent in travelling about, chiefly in the south of France. They returned to Paris, or at least to its neighbourhood, in 1785, and Mlle Necker resumed literary work of a miscellaneous kind, including a novel, Sophie, printed in 1786, and a tragedy, Jeanne Grey, published in 1790. It became, however, a question of marrying her. Her want of beauty was compensated by her fortune. But her parents are said to have objected to her marrying a Roman Catholic, which, in France, considerably limited her choice. There is a legend that William Pitt the younger thought of her; the somewhat notorious lover of Mlle de Lespinasse, Guibert, a cold-hearted coxcomb of some talent, certainly paid her addresses. But she finally married Eric Magnus, Baron of Staël-Holstein, who was first an attaché of the Swedish