Johann Jakob Engel

In 1776 he was appointed professor of moral philosophy and belles-lettres in the Joachimstal gymnasium at Berlin, and a few years later he became tutor to the crown prince of Prussia, afterwards Frederick William III.

[2] The lessons which he gave his royal pupil in ethics and politics were published in 1798 under the title Fürstenspiegel ("Mirror for Princes"), and are a favourable specimen of his powers as a popular philosophical writer.

[3] His most popular work was Der Philosoph für die Welt (1775), which consists chiefly of dialogues on men and morals, written from the utilitarian standpoint of the philosophy of the day.

His last work, a romance entitled Herr Lorenz Stark (1795), achieved a great success, by virtue of the marked individuality of its characters and its appeal to middle-class sentiment.

[2] He wanted to make the German theatre the mirror of the national life, and he wrote several plays, but they were of little merit – Der dankbare Sohn and Edelknaben are examples.