Was the Marquis de Sade (1740 1814) a sadist, criminal and lunatic, or an enlightener, indeed a pioneer against the suppression of drives and hypocritical morals? In this first serious De Sade biography in decades, the historian Volker Reinhardt reveals the true life of the Southern French nobleman behind the numerous myths and images. Based on numerous sources from the 18th and 19th centuries, he describes the free-spirited, licentious youth of the beautiful marquis, his first experiments with innocent victims, the long period of flight and imprisonment, his involvement in the French Revolution and finally his last years in an asylum. Particular attention is paid to de Sade's philosophical novels, in which men and women test sexual constellations in remote castles, the moral wid in the cruellest way.