  Rehberg was born in 1757 into a middle class Protestant family.  His father was a secretary for the estates of Calenberg, one of the duchies of Hannover.  Although Rehberg aspired to an academic career, he was foiled in his ambitions.  A plan to get him a teaching post at the Berlin Ritterakademie was thwarted by no less than Frederick the Great, who turned him down on the grounds that royal practice was to hire only cooks from Hannover.  After a humiliating four years teaching German to Englishmen, he became in 1783 the secretary to the Duke of York, who was then bishop of Osnabrück. So impressed was the Duke with Rehberg's abilities that he made him in 1786 a secretary to the Hannoverian Geheime Ratskollegium (the secret counsel).  The Ratskollegium consisted in aristocrats, though its affairs were usually conducted by bourgeois secretaries like Rehberg, who were denied any vote.  It was one of the tragedies of Rehberg's career that his onerous duties gave him little time for philosophy. Hence his writings are scattered and occasional, and sometimes lack precision and polish.  For the same reason, he never gave a systematic exposition of his philosophy.  