and viewed it as an opportunity to reenter the public sphere. His reply was published in January in the Leipzig Blätter für literarische Unterhaltung, a liberal journal that had been founded by Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus. There he not only responded to Ringseis' account, but furthermore expressed his general opinions on the function of academic institutions, and advocated the "Right to Free Research and Free Speech." He also made a number of unflattering remarks regarding Ringseis' personal appearance. In reaction the ultramontanist party in Munich launched an organized offensive, in both the press and in official circles, to discredit Fallmerayer. An article published in the Tiroler Zeitung claimed that, as a result of unspecified transgressions committed in Athens, Fallmerayer had been punished by rhaphanidosis. On January 25, Peter Ernst von Lasaulx proposed the formation of a commission to consider Fallmerayer's expulsion from the Academy; despite a spirited defense of Fallmerayer by Leonhard von Spengel, the motion was passed with a vote of 10 to 8. The commission was formed in March, and while it declined to expel Fallmerayer, resolved to compose an official rebuke, which was published in the AZ on March 12. In his last decade Fallmerayer continued to publish a stream of political and cultural articles, in particular in the journals Donau and Deutsches Museum. With the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854, Fallmerayer's activity as correspondent for the AZ once more increased. In this conflict he naturally supported the European-Ottoman coalition against the Czar. He also returned to more academic pursuits, devoting particular attention to a series of publications on the medieval history of Albania. Jakob Philipp Fallmerayer died in Munich on 26 April 1861 as a result of weakness of the heart. The last entry in his diary, written the previous evening, reads Fahle Sonne (meaning "pale sun"). Contributions Fallmerayer is considered one of the great 19th-century intellectuals in the German-speaking world and was adored by the Nazi regime. He is remembered as "a co-founder of Byzantine studies, as discoverer of the divisive Greek theory, as a prophet of the world-historical opposition between Occident and Orient, and finally as a brilliant essayist." Fallmerayer has been described as "one of the greatest German stylists," and the Fragmente aus dem Orient is a classic of German travel literature. Fallmerayer was one of three scholars (together with Gottlieb Lukas Friedrich Tafel and Georg Martin Thomas) who laid the foundation