He lacked a classical education but read voraciously and was well versed in modern languages, and started publishing translations from French and English at an early age.

Huber found employment as a diplomat, and in 1788 moved to Mainz, where he started a friendship with the world traveller Georg Forster and his wife Therese.

When rumours about his affair with Therese started to spread in literary circles, Huber broke his engagement with Dora, ending his friendship with Körner and damaging his relations with Schiller.

When the French revolutionary army under Custine entered Mainz, Huber moved to Frankfurt, but stayed in contact with the Forsters, causing suspicion among his superiors.

Therese Forster left Mainz for Strasbourg and then to the neutral territory of Neuchâtel in present-day Switzerland, and Huber quit his diplomatic service to be with her.

For political reasons, the newspaper moved from Tübingen via Stuttgart to Ulm, where Huber was given a title and an annual salary by the Elector of Bavaria in March 1804.

[8][13][14] The child was baptised Louis Ferdinand in the Catholic Church of Saint André des Arcs [fr]; one godparent was the wife of Michael Huber's friend Johann Georg Wille, a German-born artist and engraver.

[18] His father had many connections to Leipzig society, including to the artist Adam Friedrich Oeser, who had influenced the young Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, as well as to poet Christian Fürchtegott Gellert.

[16][19] Michael Huber also had a large collection of engravings that attracted visitors and was mentioned in Goethe's autobiographical Dichtung und Wahrheit,[20][21] and he became known as an art expert.

[34] In the same year, he published one of several translations of the Pierre Beaumarchais play La Folle Journée, ou Le Mariage de Figaro, which was successfully performed in Leipzig by Bondini–Seconda but met with critical disapproval.

[37] Together with letters of admiration, the longest of which was by Huber, they sent a purse embroidered by Minna, a musical adaptation of a Schiller poem by Körner, and four sketches depicting the friends by Dora.

[43] On the initiative of Huber's parents, the Saxony minister Heinrich Gottlieb von Stutterheim [de] agreed to help their son to find employment in the diplomatic service.

[44] Huber then also moved to Dresden, where he lived together with Schiller, in a house owned by the court gardener Fleischmann and close to the Körner city residence on Kohlmarkt.

[61] After he complained in a letter to Schiller, he received a response admonishing him not to give up in the face of difficulties and praising him for the earlier scenes of Huber's play Das heimliche Gericht, which had been published in three issues of Thalia.

[72] The play premiered on 11 February 1790 in the Mannheim National Theatre under the direction of Wolfgang Heribert von Dalberg, with actors including August Wilhelm Iffland and Heinrich Beck.

This anonymous review was written by August Wilhelm Schlegel, but Huber incorrectly assumed that Christian Gottlob Heyne, Therese Forster's father, was the author.

[76] Following advice by the Forsters, Huber started to read more about history, which led to the publication of translations of the memories of Jean François Paul de Gondi and Charles Pinot Duclos.

[94] When Goethe visited Mainz in August 1792, he spent two evenings with the Forsters and friends including Huber and Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring.

[98] On 20 September 1792, the French revolutionary army won a victory in the Battle of Valmy, and soon after, troops under Adam Philippe, Comte de Custine invaded Germany.

[107][108] Huber and Therese planned that she should divorce Forster, which was possible in revolutionary France by a simple declaration of both partners in front of a judge, so they would be able to marry.

After confiding in a government official that the reason for his resignation was the desire to be with Therese, he finally succeeded in obtaining his discharge, and he travelled to Neuchâtel, where he arrived in July 1793.

In the hope of earning more money from them, Huber also re-published his plays and essays[128] and edited the final volume of Forster's travelogue Ansichten vom Niederrhein.

[129] Therese also wrote her first novel, Adventures on a Journey to New Holland, which appeared at first under Ludwig Ferdinand Huber's name, as did all her works until his death.

[135] Together with de Charrière and her friend Benjamin Constant, Huber started studying the works of German philosopher Immanuel Kant and translated some of them into French, although he found them difficult to understand.

[136][137] In 1795, Huber translated an excerpt of Kant's Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch into French, which appeared anonymously in January 1796 in Le Moniteur Universel.

In 1799, he wrote a positive review of Christoph Friedrich Nicolai's satirical epistolary novel Vertraute Briefe von Adelheid B** an ihre Freundin Julie S**.

[163] In July 1801, Huber's stepdaughter Therese Forster was sent to live with de Charrière at her Le Pontet mansion in Colombier, to prepare her for future employment as a governess.

[133] This arrangement benefitted both sides, with Forster receiving more education than was possible in her home and de Charrière enjoying her support, which lifted her depressive mood.

[164] The Allgemeine Zeitung was under some pressure from censorship in the Duchy of Württemberg, and Cotta resolved the difficulties by moving the newspaper offices to Ulm in the Electorate of Bavaria, where it appeared from 17 November 1803.

[6][185] The phrase marmorglatt und marmorkalt (as smooth and cold as marble) from Huber's review of Goethe's The Natural Daughter has become proverbial and appears in Georg Büchmann's influential collection of quotes and catchphrases, Geflügelte Worte [de].