her hands on a copy of "Gedichte eines Lebendigen" (loosely "Poems of one who is alive"), a poetry collection by the young Stuttgart poet Georg Herwegh, who was living in political exile in Switzerland. The little volume had been promptly banned by the authorities, despite which (or possibly because of which) it had become a bestseller. Like many of her generation, she found herself fired up by the verses that evoked unity among all people and called for revolution. "That is the answer my soul was missing" ("Das ist die Antwort auf meine Seele!"), she is said to have cried out. Her image of this noble poet became a focus in her diary entries and she set about engineering a meeting with her new "favourite bard". She was in love – albeit platonically at this stage – with a man she had never met. Siegmund discovered that during the late summer of 1842 Herwegh had planned a celebrity tour of Germany, which would include Berlin. He was looking for people to work on a new project to be centred round a newspaper, "Deutschen Boten aus ser Schweiz" ("German messages from Switzerland"), intended, it has been suggested, to get around the press censorship in Prussia. As he toured the cities he was widely feted. Getting near him was no simple matter. Nevertheless, helped by her friend Charlotte Guticke (who herself later married Max Duncker), Siegmund managed, at an art exhibition, to get close enough to Herwegh to speak with him. That turned into a meal together followed by a succession of increasingly excited daily diary entries. Georg Herwegh and Emma Siegmund became engaged on or before 13 November 1842. During his visit, Herwegh was also given an audience with King Frederick William IV whose curiosity had been aroused. The encounter was more an exchange of views than a meeting of minds. At the end of it the king murmured, "I know we are enemies, but I must be true to my profession, we want to be honest enemies" (""Ich weiß, wir sind Feinde, aber ich muss nun mal bei meinem Handwerk bleiben, wir wollen ehrliche Feinde sein." ") and signaled the end of their meeting. Directly following the audience, he ordered a ban on "Deutschen Boten aus ser Schweiz". The lovers spent Christmas at the Siegmund family home in Berlin. In December 1842, the king became aware that Herwegh had published