[...] for a bathtub." Shortly before the signing of the treaty, on 24 June 1890, a declaration, signed by four Germans living in Switzerland, appeared in several German newspapers, titled "Germany awake!", calling for Germans to oppose to the treaty. In another letter three weeks later, the authors called for the foundation of a National League, "the purpose of which should be to give expression to what we wanted and expected of a national government in situations similar to the situation created by the Anglo-German treaty". By 1 August 1890, industrialist Alfred Hugenberg had picked up the call and declared himself temporarily in control of the management of such a league, while at the same time calling onto Peters to become its leader. Peters, who had just recently returned from Africa, originally refused, not wanting to antagonise the German government, who he hoped would fund his further East African endeavours. The first official meeting of the organisation that would become the Pan-German League took place in Frankfurt am Main on 28 September 1890, presided over by university professor John Wislicenus and attended by seven people. As a result of the meeting, Hugenberg and Wislicenus issued another call to action. After the initial political struggles over the Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty had subsided, Peters eventually agreed to join forces, on the condition that the remnants of the earlier General German Society were included. On 25 January 1891, Peters personally invited a number of members of the Reichstag, the German federal parliament, and several other people to meet with Hugenberg and Wislicenus. As a result, the Allgemeiner Deutscher Verein, a nominal resurrection of Peters' original society, was founded on 9 April 1891 in Berlin. The League took a quotation by Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg as its motto: ("Remember that you are a German"). Peters initially took over the presidency of the League, but soon went back to Africa and resigned from his post, in order not to come into conflicts of interest between the League and the Foreign Office. Karl von der Heydt, a banker, took over the position. The early period of the League was difficult. While membership rose quickly, from around 2,000 in June 1891 to around 21,000 in May 1892, management of the League was lacking. The membership fee was set low, aimed to attract members, but the profits proved insufficient to run the operation. The League's journal, the Mitteilungen