whereupon he emancipated his serfs and gave them land, goods and money, presaging the reform of 1861. In 1862, he left Elizabethgrad for a tour in Germany, where he spent two years "to know better the mind's matter". His sister Charitis died soon after his return to Russia in 1864. After the death of his mother, in 1867, he sold his estates at a ridiculously low price, distributed almost all of his possessions and left Russia permanently. He first went to Leipzig, where he attended the lectures of Moritz Wilhelm Drobisch (1802–1896), a Herbartian philosopher and one of the forerunners of the neo-Kantian revival of the 1860s. He was there at the same time that Nietzsche was a student, although it does not appear that they met. In 1869, he moved to Tübingen and to Stuttgart in 1871. Here, at the orthodox Church of the Court, he married on 30 January 1872, Elisabeth (Elise) Gatternich and the two had a daughter, Hélène. In Leipzig, Spir befriended the publisher and fellow Freemason Joseph Gabriel Findel, who published most of Spir's works. His most important book, Denken und Wirklichkeit: Versuch einer Erneuerung der kritischen Philosophie (Thought and Reality: Attempt at a Renewal of Critical Philosophy) was published in 1873. A second edition, which was the one owned by Nietzsche, was published in 1877. In an attempt to reach a broader readership, Spir wrote directly in French his Esquisses de philosophie critique (Outlines of critical philosophy), published for the first time in 1877. A new edition was published forty years after his death, in 1930, with an introduction by the French philosopher and professor at the Sorbonne Léon Brunschvicg. In 1878, having suffered from pneumonia, in order to treat the consequences of his illness, a chronic cough, Spir moved to Lausanne, Switzerland, where he spent five years. In 1884, Spir asked the Russian Emperor authorization to leave Russian citizenship and to obtain Swiss citizenship. In the same year, he received the imperial authorization and applied for a certificate of registry at Belmont-sur-Lausanne, where he lived with his family. In 1886, to enjoy the facilities of a bigger library (the "Société de Lecture", a private reading society), he moved to Geneva. On 17 September 1889, he received from the Swiss Federal Government the authorization for his wife, his daughter, and himself to become Swiss citizens. He died of influenza on 26 March 1890 in