“I don’t think we’re sleepwalking, because people have striven to be as thoughtful as possible. In some ways, they’ve been too thoughtful. We’re paralysed, in fact, by our risk awareness.” — Christopher Clark

It’s 1830 in East Prussia. The city of Königsberg still bathed in the amber glow of the late Enlightenment—at least in the minds of people who’d never been there. But that glow, it goes without saying, is illusionary. The greatest of all Königsberg citizens, the illustrious 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant is dead. Napoleon’s shattered army limped west back through the city two decades earlier after its failed invasion of Russia. The place had slipped into a sad provinciality, living off 18th century nostalgia. And then two Lutheran preachers, so-called “Muckers”, get accused of running a sex cult.
Christopher Clark—Regius Professor of History at Cambridge, author of the brilliant The Sleepwalkers and Revolutionary Spring—has been brooding on this story for thirty years. His short new book, A Scandal in Königsberg, is a Prussian microhistory with global ambition. The scandal, he says, was entirely fabricated: no sexual transgressions ever occurred. The two Muckers were convicted, stripped (so to speak) of office, and imprisoned, then exonerated on appeal – giving this case more historical significance than a mere sex scandal.
What made them targets? They were evangelical in a city that prized Kantian rationalism. They followed a dead mystic who believed creation was born from two cosmic spheres—fire and water—which sounded like dangerously mystical in the scientific age of steam power. And the lead preacher, Johann Ebel, committed the unforgivable sin of listening to women confess their unhappy marriages. In a pre-Freudian central Europe, Ebel became the confidant the men of Königsberg couldn’t abide.
And then there’s Iran — far from 19th century East Prussia, but on all of our minds right now. At the end of our conversation, I couldn’t resist asking Clark if he thinks we are sleepwalking into another catastrophic world war. He doesn’t think so. The problem in 1914 was a failure of imagination, he says. Today, Clark argues, we’re actually paralysed by a fear of risk. The Iran invasion is certainly stress testing the international system. But the one thing most people agree on, Clark notes with characteristic dryness, is that nobody much regrets any damage done to the regime of the Mullahs. Even if, as he warns, we still don’t know whether the decision to invade Iran was smart or reckless. The Mullahs, at least, aren’t quite Muckers.

Five Takeaways
• This Was a Scandal Without a Transgression: The sexual allegations were entirely invented. Two clergymen were convicted and imprisoned, then exonerated on appeal. The fabrication is more interesting than any crime.
• Steam Was the AI of the 1830s: A dead mystic’s fire-and-water cosmogony sounded like science in the age of the steam engine. New technology makes old ideas feel prophetic.
• The Preacher Women Loved: Johann Ebel listened to women about their unhappy marriages. There were no therapists—only clergymen. The men of Königsberg found this intolerable.
• We’re Not Sleepwalking—We’re Paralysed: Clark wrote the book on 1914. He says the analogy doesn’t hold: today we’re hyper-aware of risk, especially nuclear risk. Paralysed, not blind.
• Iran and the Crumple Zone: Both Putin and the US-Israel alliance have chosen targets without nuclear weapons—probing the edges, not the core. The danger is an unintentional transition to nuclear exchange.

About the Guest
Christopher Clark is Regius Professor of History at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of The Sleepwalkers, Revolutionary Spring, Iron Kingdom, and A Scandal in Königsberg.
References
A Scandal in Königsberg by Christopher Clark: https://www.amazon.com/Scandal-K%C3%B6nigsberg-Christopher-Clark/dp/B0FCRPCF9B
The Sleepwalkers by Christopher Clark: https://www.amazon.com/Sleepwalkers-How-Europe-Went-1914/dp/0061146668
The Coming Storm by Odd Arne Westad: https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Storm-Conflict-Warnings-History/dp/1250410282

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Chapters:
00:00:00 Introduction: In disruptive times, we rely on historians
00:02:40 Königsberg then and now: from Kant to Kaliningrad
00:05:43 The amber glow of the late Enlightenment
00:07:54 The seven bridges and Euler’s invention of topology
00:10:46 Kant’s clockwork walks and Warren Buffett’s steak
00:13:58 The scandal: a scandal without a transgression
00:16:40 The Muckers—zealotry, hypocrisy, and sexual paranoia
00:22:15 Sometimes a pen is just a pen
00:24:08 Post-Napoleonic trauma and the Enlightenment’s crackup
00:27:43 Steam as the AI of the 1830s
00:29:55 The preacher women loved—and the men who hated him for it
00:33:04 Are we sleepwalking into World War III?
00:36:34 Iran, nuclear doctrine,