Johann August Starck also Stark (28 October 1741, 3 March 3, 1816) was a prolific author and controversial Königsberg theologian, as well as a widely read political writer now best remembered for arguing that an Illuminatiled conspiracy brought about the French Revolution. Immanuel Kant and Johann Georg Hamann were among his acquaintances in Königsberg. His broadly deistic approach emphasized natural religion and smoothed over doctrinal differences among the various faiths. (...) A shift towards the reactionary, first evident in Starck's 1780 anonymous Honest Thoughts about Christianity, was complete in his widely read Triumph of Philosophy (1803) a work partly inspired by Abbé Barruels attack on freemasonry (1797) wherein he claimed that the Illuminati, a freemasonry group founded by Adam Weishaupt (1748 - 1830) in 1776, stood behind the French revolution and were secretly pursuing similar lawless and godless schemes in German lands and elsewhere. Source Wikipedia