One of the most highly visible late-eighteenth-century German intellectuals, Adolph Franz Friedrich Ludwig, Freiherr von Knigge supported himself for years by his pen before landing a secure, if fairly modest, position in Hannoverian government service. His literary products included dramas; theater adaptations and reviews; novels; moral sermons; works on Freemasonry, the Illuminati, and other secret societies; satires; biting political and social commentary; and an immensely popular book on how to get along with people that was reprinted and bowdlerized until well into the nineteenth century. A talented musical amateur, he composed piano sonatas, concertos for bassoon, symphonies, and Masses, and translated opera libretti. An inspiration to the younger generation of journalists and critics at the end of the century, Knigge was committed to the advancement of the human race in the modern age. Though himself not an exponent of radical ideas, he was so outspoken on social and...