Harry Graf Kessler (1868-1937) was an influential German patron of the arts, essayist, museologist, publisher, politician, diplomat, and pacifist, who knew and advised many leading European personalities of his time, from the aged Otto von Bismarck to Josephine Baker, the legendary American-in-Paris night-club star, from the philosopher Albert Einstein to the sculptor Auguste Rodin. The son of a wealthy Hamburg banker, operating in Paris, and an aristocratic Irish beauty (much admired by Germany's then Kaiser, Wilhelm I), Harry was educated and fluent in three languages, and later studied...