Hermann Schuttler

The fight for supremacy in the German and European Freemasonry is one of the central topics of this second volume of the correspondences of the Order of Illuminati. Another key element is the discord between the 'Ordensgeneral' Adam Weishaupt and his most important colleague Adolph Freiherr von Knigge. All of the letters are comprehensively annotated and indexed; most of them are now being published for the first time. The first volume received positive critical attention: Der Spiegel attested that the editors have shed light on the atmospheres and struggles within the legendary secret society as precisely as no one before. The correspondence, wrote Der Spiegel, opens up a fascinating, yet very German story: a tragic comedy, made up of high aims, imaginations of power and loss of reality.