Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel

Born Jan. 31, 1741, in Gerdauen, near Königsberg; died Apr. 23, 1796, in Königsberg. German writer.

Hippel graduated from the University of Königsberg in 1764; at the university he had attended lectures by I. Kant in 1758 and 1759. In 1760 he began to publish anonymously. Hippel glorified rural life and nature in such poems as “Rural Impressions” and “Returning From the Country” (1764–65) and in such prose works as Sketches From Nature (1790). His novels Careers in an Ascending Line (vols. 1–4, 1778–81) and Crisscross Crusades of the Knight From A to Z (vols. 1–2, 1793–94) ridicule the immorality of the arrogant nobility, the philistinism of the professors, and the absurd rites of the Freemasons and stress the notion of human self-improvement.