Georg Wilhelm Hegel, having received offers of a post from the Universities of Erlangen, Berlin and Heidelberg, had chosen Heidelberg, where he had moved in 1816.

Soon after, his illegitimate son Ludwig Fischer (now ten years old) joined the Hegel household in April 1817, having thus far spent his childhood in an orphanage, as his mother had died in the meantime.

Hegel philosopher had published The Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline (1817) as a summary of his idealist philosophy for students attending his lectures at Heidelberg.

In 1818, Hegel accepts the renewed offer of the chair of philosophy at the University of Berlin, which had remained vacant since Johann Gottlieb Fichte's death in 1814.