of Attica. His lecture was answered with an attack on his theories by Friedrich Wilhelm Thiersch, and the two opposing lectures led to a controversy in Munich academic circles, as well as in the popular press. The controversy had a pointedly political dimension, with Thiersch representing the "Idealpolitik" position, according to which Bavaria should support the Greek state, and Fallmerayer advocating a hands-off "Realpolitik." This political polemic was further provoked by the preface to the second volume of Fallmerayer's Geschichte, published in 1836, in which he wrote that the Greek War of Independence was a "purely Shqiptarian (Albanian), not a Hellenic Revolution." He advocated furthermore the replacement of the German monarchy in Greece by a native regime. 1839 marked the beginning of Fallmerayer's career as a correspondent for the Allgemeine Zeitung, where he would continue to publish until his death. Fallmerayer's contributions to the AZ included travel essays, book reviews, political columns, and Feuilletons. Fallmerayer soon after left the country again on account of political troubles, and spent the greater part of the next four years in travel, spending the winter of 1839–1840 with Count Tolstoy at Geneva. Between July 1840 and June 1842 Fallmerayer embarked on his second major journey, setting out from Regensburg and travelling along the Danube and across the Black Sea to Trapezunt. After long stays in Trapezunt, Constantinople, Athos–Chalkidiki and the rest of Macedonia, and Athens, he returned to Munich via Trieste and Venice. Fallmerayer published numerous reports from this journey in the AZ, in which he offered a mix of political observations, restatements and further developments of the Greek theory, and "charming descriptions of Anatolian and Turkish landscapes [that] bear comparison with the best examples of 19th-century Reisebilder (travel images)." During his year-long stay in Constantinople (from 10 October 1841 to 24 October 1842), Fallmerayer began to advocate European support of the Ottoman Empire as a bulwark against the growing influence of the Russian Empire in the Balkans. These articles were collected and published in 1845 as the Fragmente aus dem Orient, the work on which Fallmerayer's fame as a littérateur largely rests. Fallmerayer's anti-Russian sentiments were not yet fully developed, and upon his return to Munich in 1842, he was befriended by the Russian poet and diplomat Fyodor Tyutchev. This latter had been entrusted by Karl Nesselrode and Alexander von Benckendorff to find a new spokesperson for Russian interests in Germany. Fallmerayer's Greek