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The Genesis of German Conservatism

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Klaus Epstein's work is a genuine classic. There is hardly a single scholarly volume dealing with Germany - from the Aufklärung through the French and Napoleonic revolutions - which doesn't cite or, in some cases, utilize extensively `The Genesis of German Conservatism.' In the English speaking world it has become indispensible: Epstein effortlessly navigates, and masterfully interprets, mountains of primary/contemporary and secondary German language material.

Generalists and specialists will benefit from Epstein's discussion of the Prussian Religious Edicts and the mystical-absolutist policies of Frederick William II; Friedrich Nicolai, the ADB, and his extended network of Berlin Aufklärer; Josephinian reform and absolutism, as well as the later reactionary police-state apparatus of Leopold and Francis; reading societies, secret societies, Illuminati, Freemasons, Rosicrucians and Jesuits.

So much scholarship about this era in history is rife with anachronistic left/right polemics. Epstein, however, is as impartial in his treatment of Enlightenment adherents as he is with obscurantists and religious traditionalists. His succinct chapter on the Bavarian Illuminati, for instance, also includes an essential discussion of the mystical Rosicrucians which admirably elucidates the concerns and preoccupations of both. Chapters 9 and 10 ("The Challenge of the French Revolution" and "The Conspiracy Theory of the Revolution") are, for me, the highlight of the book - a detailed account of the beginnings of the modern conspiracy theory with such counter-revolutionary journals as L. A. Hoffmann's `Wiener Zeitschrift', H.A.O. Reichard's `Revolutions-Almanach', and Grolman's and Starck's `Eudämonia' (the former and the latter being essential material for John Robison's and the Abbé Barruel's 'Proofs of a Conspiracy' and the 'Memoirs illustrating the history of jacobinism', respectively).

In 1966, when this remarkable volume was published, Klaus Epstein had already gained the respect and admiration of his peers and seemed destined for a long and distinguished career. One year later, however, he regrettably died in a car crash in Germany; the planned second part of the present work was thus never finished.