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Klaus was a loving son, brother, husband and father; a great friend and mentor; an accomplished scholar (and a deceptively dangerous intellectual adversary); classical pianist, Sunday sailor, collector and inveterate trader of Asian rugs, coffee fanatic, lover of arguments, liverwurst, marzipan, Tiramisu, and an early and staunch critic of the academic illiberal left. He died in 2018 after a long and tragic struggle with Parkinson's. He was a remarkable man who led a remarkable life. He was born in Kiel, Germany in 1931, two years before Hitler came to power. His parents, Heinrich and Minna, were converts to Mormonism, which would come to play a major role not only in his personal but also his professional life. Kiel was an important military port and a staging area for U-boats. It came under heavy bombardment by the Allies during the war and small children were sent away for safety. Klaus, 9, and his brother Uwe, 7, left together on a train with notes pinned to their jackets. They were adopted separately by locals in the Bavarian town of Ebermannstadt, where they were joined by Minna after bombing destroyed their home. They stayed until after the US army arrived in 1945, and eventually reunited with Heinrich, who had served out the war in Norway. His parents cared deeply about culture and education. He was trained in classical piano from the age of 4 and played through the end of his life, at 87, even after Parkinson's took his hands. Through a connection in the church, the family emigrated to the United States in 1951, sailing into New York City on a foggy morning past the Statue of Liberty, a sight that left an emotional and lasting impression. They soon found themselves in Utah, and Klaus enrolled in Brigham Young University where he worked the night shift at the Utah Psychiatric Hospital to pay his way. A few years later, having served on a mission for the church in Austria, he met the love of his life, Joan. They married in 1959 and had four children. He was a gifted student and pursued graduate studies in history, receiving his PhD at Wayne State in Detroit, Michigan in 1963. His doctoral thesis became a book, Quest for Empire: The Political Kingdom of God and the Council of Fifty in Mormon History, a ground-breaking account of the inner-workings of what at the time was a highly secretive governing body in the church. It won both academic plaudits and the opprobrium of church authorities, which revoked Klaus's archive access after he published it. The family moved to Kingston, Ontario in 1968, where Klaus taught Antebellum American history at Queen's University while continuing his research on Mormonism until his retirement in 1996. In 1981 he published a second book, Mormonism and the American Experience. In addition to his books, he wrote numerous articles on Mormonism, American Millennialism, and Antebellum America; and he frequently reviewed other writers' books and articles on similar subjects. He was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 2010.