Such friendly and tactful admonitions, permitting the pupil to follow out his own bent, were always employed by Hirsch, and they but served to enkindle Graetz’s enthusiasm anew. In spite of the young man’s critical propensities combined with a sanguine temperament, his devoted attachment to his master by no means waned under the strain of daily intimate intercourse, not even when he could no longer doubt his ideal’s lack of historic depth and scientific, or rather philosophic insight. Graetz’s nature strongly impelled him to form friendships, and his attachments were fervent. He always felt a lively interest in what went on about him, and even at that early time he was fond of taking an active part in shaping the occurrences of the day, whenever he thought, that by assuming the rôle of Providence he might be useful to his friends in the ordering of their affairs--a disposition that redounded later to the benefit of many of his pupils. In January, 1837, for instance, the belated news reached him from his home, with which he kept up a steady correspondence, that the Chief Rabbi Akiba Eger had died in Posen. Without being commissioned to do so, he wrote to the directors of the Posen congregation, and brought Hirsch, whose yearning for a wide sphere of activity he knew, to their notice. When the directors entered into negotiations with Hirsch he broke out into jubilation. In fact, a party favoring the pretensions of the Oldenburg District Rabbi formed in Posen, but nothing more resulted. The procedure was repeated when the Wollstein rabbinate fell vacant in 1840, except that Hirsch, to his disciple’s great disappointment, would not share Graetz’s enthusiasm for Wollstein. From this it appears that Graetz was not a recluse nor a bookworm. In Oldenburg, as everywhere, he sought to meet people and cultivate friendly intercourse with them, and his joyous nature readily yielded to the innocent gayety of social pleasures.