The first Hebrew novel, Ahavat Ziyyon (”The Love of Zion”, 1852), by Abraham Mapu, is a florid Romantic idyll set in the days of the prophet Isaiah, in which Mapu, like all Haskala writers, employs phrases culled from the Bible and adapted to the thought the writer wishes to express.

A teacher of religion and German, Mapu is an influential advocate of the Haskala.

A student from Leipzig had attempted to assassinate William in July, but he had been only lightly injured.

Like Frederick I of Prussia, William travels to Königsberg and there crowns himself at the Schlosskirche on October 18, 1861.

William has chosen the anniversary of the Battle of Leipzig or this event, which is the first Prussian crowning ceremony since 1701 and the only crowning of a German king in the nineteenth century.

William refuses to comply with his brother's wish, expressed in Frederick William's last will, that he should abrogate the constitution

The heavily plotted novels of Lithuanian novelist Abraham Mapu, influenced stylistically by Victor Hugo and Eugène Sue, romanticize a sovereign Israel and indirectly pave the way for the revival of Jewish nationalism and the Zionist movement.

His second novel, Ashmat Shomron (Guilt of Samaria, 1865), is a biblical epic about the hostility between Jerusalem and Samaria in the time of King Ahaz.

His third, Ayit tzavua' (The Hypocrite; 1858-69), marks a departure.

Dealing with contemporary life in the ghetto and attacking its social evils, it portrays a new type, the maskil (possessor of Haskala), in a fight against orthodox obscurantism.

Another novel, Hoze hezyono (The Visionary; 1869), an exposé of Hasidism, is confiscated by religious authorities.

… while the U.S.S.R. absorbs the entire Baltic coast as far as the venerable German port of Königsberg (Kaliningrad).