Karl August Varnhagen von Ense made a career as critic, journalist, memoirist, biographer, literary arbiter, and promoter of the cause of representative government and social reform. His position is, perhaps, unique in nineteenth-century German literature. His vision was focused upon society, and he saw himself as part of a social transformation that would bring political emancipation to Europe. He cultivated a network of correspondents that included the major figures of his age, and he worked within the limits of this vast epistolary labor to promote his liberal views wherever he could.

Varnhagen was born to middle-class parents on 21 February 1785 in Düsseldorf. His father, Johann Andreas Jakob Varnhagen, was a Rhenish physician, a Catholic, and an avid supporter of the French Revolution. His mother, whose maiden name was Kunz, was Protestant and was native to Alsace, on the French side of the Rhine. While Varnhagen was still...