Adolf von Wilbrandt catered to the literary interests of the nineteenth-century liberal bourgeoisie and seldom challenged the prevailing ideology. He was a welcome addition to social salons where knowledge of new directions in current affairs, art, science, and philosophy was much prized, especially if combined with a sense of proportion and humor. His literary success was often due to his ability to refer to these shifting intellectual interests. As the critic Max Behr observed in his obituary of the author, Wilbrandt's work shows more breadth than depth. He touched on hypnotism and spiritualism, socialism and woman's rights, naturalism and theosophy. He developed thinly disguised portraits of the cultural figures of the age in his novels and plays--the painter Johannes Kugler in Die Maler (The Painters, 1872), the art historian Friedrich Eggers in Fridolins heimliche Ehe (1875; translated as Fridolin's Mystical Marriage, 1884), the Viennese painter Hans Makart and the Munich patron...