Emma Herwegh's Freedom

A strong female protagonist who shares more than her first name with Madame Bovary.

When Emma, a young woman from a good home, marries the revolutionary poet Georg Herwegh, she only wants one thing: to love and hate lifelong by his side. But when Herwegh falls head over heels in love with Natalie, the wife of his comrade Alexander Herzen, their manifesto of free love becomes a battle of loyalty and betrayal.

Emma does not do things by halves. Her marriage is a scandal. She moves to Marx and Heine’s Paris and is the only woman to join the armed struggle of 1848 to bring France’s revolution back home. Told grippingly in close-up, Dirk Kurbjuweit recounts the story of a woman who is not prepared to bow down to the prejudices of her times.
Impoverished and alone in Paris, Emma still clings to what is most important to her: her irrepressible desire for freedom. And she persists in her vision even when her true love threatens to shatter. Dirk Kurbjuweit makes Emma our contemporary: a woman who wants both total freedom and total personal happiness.