An attempt to force upon the Jena Burschenschaft his radical views regarding moral and political reform excited the opposition of all but a small minority. Friends, even, were alienated by his stern, intolerant attitude, and by the charge of weakness or cowardice with which he met dissent from the extremities to which he pushed his principles; so that the number of “Unconditionals” at Jena was never more than a small handful. One of these, however, was Karl Sand, whose murder of Kotzebue on March 23, 1819, was the logical outcome of Follen’s teaching, acting upon a mind unbalanced by fanatical zeal in the cause of popular liberty. To the authorities all student associations became objects of suspicion, and under the reactionary measures that followed the Giessen “Blacks” and the _Burschenschaften_ at Jena and other universities suffered alike. Follen was forbidden to lecture any longer at Jena, and he therefore returned to his home in Giessen.[193] Here, however, he found himself a proscribed man. Learning that the government intended to send him to prison, he left Giessen for Strasburg in the winter of 1819-20, visited for a time in Paris, where he made the acquaintance of Lafayette and, through him, of other distinguished men, and in the summer of 1821 settled in Basel, as public lecturer on jurisprudence and metaphysics in the recently organized University. [Illustration: FIG. 68.—Charles Beck (1798-1866). (From a Portrait in the Library of Harvard University).] Among the German refugees whose friendship Follen enjoyed during his three years at Basel were the distinguished theologian De Wette, and his stepson Charles (German, _Karl_) Beck. Beck was born in Heidelberg August 19, 1798. His father, a merchant, died when the boy was still young, and his mother afterwards became the wife of Wilhelm De Wette, professor in the university of Heidelberg. In 1810 the family removed to Berlin, whither De Wette had been called to fill the chair of theology in the new Prussian university. There, as a student in the Werder’sche _Gymnasium_, Beck soon came under Jahn’s influence, began to frequent the Hasenheide Turnplatz, and owing to his natural robustness of body, and the enthusiasm with which he applied himself to the exercises, developed more than usual proficiency in all the arts of the _Turner_. After the assassination of Kotzebue in 1819, De Wette, who had long been a friend of the Sand family, wrote a letter to the mother, in which he endeavored to console her with the thought that her son’s act, though wicked, arose from a mistaken notion of duty. The Prussian authorities, upon learning of this letter, accused the eminent teacher of seeking to excuse the crime, and in token of their displeasure deprived him of his chair and even banished him from the kingdom. After several years in retirement he accepted, in 1822, the professorship of theology in the University of Basel, and passed the remainder of his life in that city.