Adolph Freiherr Knigge

Adolph Franz Friedrich Ludwig, Freiherr von Knigge (Bredenbeck, 1752 – Bremen, 1796), was a German writer of the Enlightenment, a Freemason and one of the most active figures in the Bavarian Illuminati. Today he is remembered mainly for a book on social conduct, a reputation that is only part of his story but explains why he is still read in German.

He was born in the Electorate of Hanover into a family of minor nobility. After his parents died he inherited debts that left him without property, and he had to make his own living. He studied law at Göttingen from 1769 to 1772, and moved in the courts of Kassel, where he is said to have been initiated into Freemasonry, and Weimar, where he became a chamberlain in 1777. These court contacts later helped him spread his ideas.

In 1780 he joined Adam Weishaupt in the Illuminati. His personal connections helped the order grow, but his differences with Weishaupt became irreconcilable, and in 1784 he withdrew for good. After a serious illness he lost the support of his aristocratic patrons and much of his fortune. In his last years he defended the French Revolution, which brought suspicions of Jacobinism and a period under police surveillance. He recovered his money in 1790, settled in Bremen and died there in 1796.

His output included plays, novels and travel writing, but his best-known work is On Human Intercourse (1788). It is less a guide to etiquette than a reflection on the basis of human relations, covering temperaments, relations between generations, friendship, marriage and the treatment of women and animals, with a view of the prejudices of his age that modern readers approach with caution. His most lasting legacy is linguistic: in German, the name Knigge has come to mean good manners.