Knigge, Adolph von
Entry updated 16 March 2026. Tagged: Author.
(1752-1796) German lawyer and author, best known for a work anachronistically perhaps well described as a study in the sociology of manners, Über den Umgang mit Menschen ["On Human Relations"] (1788), which was soon understood and referred to as a guide to good manners. Though soon widely known, Knigge attempted to disguise his authorship of his novels, almost invariably cast as Satires, an early example of which is Benjamin Noldmanns Geschichte der Auifkärung in Abyssinia ["Benjamin Noldmann's History of the Enlightenment in Abyssinia"] (1791), where an attempt to create a Utopia in Abyssinia, by exposing its rulers to the marvels of Europe, creates a brutally degenerate society on the basis of what they have seen.
The most successful of these fictions, Geschichte Peter Clausens von dem Verfassers des Romans meines Lebens (1783-1785 3vols; trans C and G Kearsley as The German Gil Blas; Or, the Adventures of Peter Claus 1793 3vols)takes the shape of a Fantastic Voyage. Peter Clausen is less the protagonist of the whole than the conveyor to readers of an earlier eighteenth-century manuscript whose author, Christoff Heinrich Brick, after experiences with the historical Captain Cook (1728-1779) in Tahiti and elsewhere, describes his journey southwards to the South Pole, where he discovers a hidden, temperate Island; its inhabitants, blond and comely (see Race in SF), half Tahitian and half European, have built a Utopia whose clemency offers a Satirical contrast to the tyrannies of Europe. Brigge died young before two decades of outright war capped the turmoil of his era. [JC]
Adolf Franz Friedrich Ludwig, Freiherr von Knigge
born near Hannover, Lower Saxony [now Germany]: 16 October 1752
died Bremen, Free City of Bremen [now Germany]: 6 May 1796
works (highly selected)
- Benjamin Noldmanns Geschichte der Auifkärung in Abyssinia ["Benjamin Noldmann's History of the Enlightenment in Abyssinia"] (Gottingen, Saxony [now Germany]: Johann Christian Dieterich, 1791) [published in two volumes: binding unknown/]
- Geschichte Peter Clausens von dem Verfassers des Romans meines Lebens (Frankfurt am Main, Free City of Frankfurt [now Germany]: Andreäische Buchhabndlung, 1783-1785) [published in three volumes: priority of each volume confusedly shared with other publishers in Riga, Latvia and elsewhere: binding unknown/]
- The German Gil Blas; Or, the Adventures of Peter Claus (London: C and G Kearsley, 1793) [published in three volumes: possibly trans by C and G Kearsley of the above: binding unknown/]
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