Iwan Bloch was a pioneering German physician and sexologist working at the turn of the twentieth century, and this study of the Marquis de Sade and his era is written in German. Bloch approaches Sade from a medical and historical perspective, situating his life and writings within the social and intellectual context of late-eighteenth-century France and the revolutionary period.
The work represents an early serious scholarly attempt to analyze Sade rather than simply condemn or suppress him. This public-domain text is available as a free EPUB download for readers of German interested in literary history and the history of ideas.