A Scandal in Königsberg - by Christopher Clark (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Named a Best Book of the Year by TheTimes (London)

As told by one of our greatest historians, the story of the scandal that took down two Lutheran preachers in the heart of nineteenth-century Prussia--a chamber piece of cultish esotericism, pseudoscience, and political resistance that conjures up Europe at the end of the age of reason and presages our current age of misinformation

In 1835, Johannes Ebel and Georg Heinrich Diestel were tried for having started a cult. Worse: It was a cult that encouraged scandalous sexual behavior in women, including the daughters of prestigious Prussian families--causing the deaths of two young women from sexual exhaustion. The trial would absorb and polarize the city of Königsberg for half a decade and ruin the lives and careers of its defendants, despite their eventual legal exoneration. The historical moment it encapsulates--a Europe reeling from the triumph and horror of a new industrial, imperial era, struggling to decide which principles will reign in the aftermath of Enlightenment reason--is a fable for our present time of political, social, and existential disquiet.

The great Cambridge historian Christopher Clark--known for The Sleepwalkers, his monumental, defining study of the causes of the First World War--came across the files containing this story three decades ago; it has been swirling in his mind ever since. In gripping, narrative prose, Clark immerses us in a Königsberg scarred by the horrors of the Napoleonic Wars, where Immanuel Kant had recently inaugurated the theory of consciousness that completely reshaped humanity's understanding of itself--but where the distinction between reason and fanaticism was now up for grabs. A Scandal in Königsberg is a European history in exquisite miniature--and a peerless lesson in the theological and philosophical debates that animated the Western world at one of its great moments of transformation.

Rich and provocative, A Scandal in Königsberg articulates an unsettling antecedent for our most fiercely litigated contemporary questions of sexual identity, freedom of thought, and who gets to decide what constitutes the truth.

Review Quotes

"A lucky archival find led Christopher Clark to a bizarre tale of nineteenth-century religious zeal and sexual paranoia in a German city now long vanished from the map. His elegant and perceptive reconstruction of provincial turmoil opens up fascinating wider perspectives on German society and religion as it moved toward unification in the Second Reich."
--Diarmaid MacCulloch, Emeritus Professor of the History of the Church, University of Oxford

"In this lively and deeply researched book, the eminent historian Christopher Clark uncovers a scandal charged with illicit sex, sensational trials, and fervent religious zeal. More than the tale of a wayward cult, A Scandal in Königsberg offers a brilliant miniature history of nineteenth-century Prussia--its politics, class tensions, and cultural life brought vividly to the page."
--David S. Reynolds, author of Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times and Walt Whitman's America

"Clark writes with his characteristic clarity and wit. This carefully researched microhistory clearly echoes our own time."
--Anna von der Goltz, Financial Times

"A splendid exercise in historical recuperation. [A Scandal in Königsberg] illustrates the confusions, uncertainties, and prejudices of a period when the horrors of revolution and warfare were still vivid in the European memory, and men and women were desperately searching for ordinary, lowercase enlightenment and spiritual guidance."
--John Banville, Literary Review (London)

"Fans of tales of clerical skulduggery, of German history in general, and culture wars. . . plus anyone interested in how intolerance ruins lives, will enjoy Clark's latest, not least because it is 'short and lively.'"
--Jonathan Boff, The Spectator

"This small book is many things, but for me what shines brightest is a tale of two renegade preachers who understood women and love."
--Gerard de Groot, The Times

"The rise of 'fake news' and 'alternative facts' in our own time. . . lend the story revealed by the files in the Geheimes Staatsarchiv an unexpected contemporary relevance. . . . Clark tells this engrossing story with all his usual narrative verve and stylistic brilliance."
--Richard J. Evans, The Times Literary Supplement

About the Author

Christopher Clark is a professor of modern European history and a fellow of St. Catharine's College at the University of Cambridge, UK. He is the author of Revolutionary Spring, The Sleepwalkers, Time and Power, Iron Kingdom, and other books.