ad counterbalanced his character; but at
Giessen, where his behaviour was no less objectionable than elsewhere, he
gave a handle to his enemies by a change [v.03 p.0212] in his public
attitude towards religion. The climax came with the publication of his
_Neueste Offenbarungen Gottes in Briefen und Erzaehlungen _ (1773-1775),
purporting to be a "model version" of the New Testament, rendered, with due
regard to enlightenment, into modern German. The book is remembered solely
through Goethe's scornful attack on its want of taste; its immediate effect
was to produce Bahrdt's expulsion from Giessen. He was lucky enough at once
to find a post as principal of the educational institution established in
his chateau at Marschlins by the Swiss statesman Ulysses von Salis
(1728-1800). The school had languished since the death of its founder and
first head, Martin Planta (1727-1772), and von Salis hoped to revive it by
reconstituting it as a "Philanthropin" under Bahrdt's management. The
experiment was a failure; Bahrdt, never at ease under the strict discipline
maintained by von Salis, resigned in 1777, and the school was closed. At
the invitation of the count of Leiningen-Dachsburg, Bahrdt now went as
general superintendent to Duerkheim on the Hardt; his luckless translation
of the Testament, however, pursued him, and in 1778 he was suspended by a
decision of the high court of the Empire. In dire poverty he fled, in 1779,
to Halle, where in spite of the opposition of the senate and the
theologians, he obtained through the interest of the Prussian minister, von
Zedlitz, permission to lecture on subjects other than theology. Forced to
earn a living by writing, he developed an astounding literary activity. His
orthodoxy had now quite gone by the board, and all his efforts were
directed to the propaganda of a "moral system" which should replace
supernatural Christianity.

By such means Bahrdt succeeded in maintaining himself until, on the death
of Frederick the Great, the religious reaction set in at the Berlin court.
The strain of writing had forced him to give up his lectures, and he had
again opened an inn on the Weinberg near Halle. Here he lived with his
mistress and his daughters--he had repudiated his wife--in disreputable
peace until 1789, when he was condemned to a year's imprisonment for a
lampoon on the Prussian religious edict of 1788. His year's enforced
leisure he spent in writing indecent stories, coarse polemics, and an