In 1847 Spielhagen left Stralsund to study jurisprudence at the University of Berlin, a journey of thirty German miles in twenty-four hours. What a revelation the great capital presented to the youthful provincial, who had never seen a railroad nor a gas jet before he began the journey! Arriving before the opening of the semester he had time to take an excursion into Thuringia, which later became so dear to him and is reflected in his _From Darkness to Light_ (second part of _Problematic Characters_), _Always to the Fore_, _Rose of the Court_, _Hans and Grete_, _The Village Coquette_, _The Amusement Commissioner_, and _The Fair Americans_. Returning to Berlin he heard, among others, Heidemann on Natural Law and Trendelenburg on Logic. The signs of revolution were already visible in the university circles, but had not as yet awakened the interests of Spielhagen, who declared that revolution was a matter of weather, and that he himself was a republican in the sense that the others were not. The next semester Spielhagen went to the University of Bonn, wavering between Law and Medicine. The landscape of the lower Rhineland was not congenial to him. He longed for his Pomeranian shore with its dunes and invigorating sea life. In Bonn he met leaders of the revolutionary party--Carl Schurz, "le bel homme," and Ludwig Meyer. The portrait he sketches of Carl Schurz is an outline of that which the liberator of Kinkel rounded out for himself in his long years of sturdy citizenship in America. Spielhagen warned Schurz at that time that his schemes were quixotic. During the following vacation, on a foot-tour through Thuringia, Spielhagen witnessed the effects of the revolution and the ensuing reaction. He arrived at Frankfurt-on-the-Main just after the close of the Great Parliament. He was deeply impressed with the violence done to Auerswald and Lichnowski, and witnessed the trial of Lassalle for the theft of the jewel-casket of the Baroness von Meyendorf. His attention was thus fixed upon the personality of the great socialist reformer who was later to play such an important rôle in his novels, and of whom he said: "Lassalle set in motion the message which not only continues today, but is only beginning to manifest its depth and power, and the end of which no mind of the wise can foresee."