Late in the 1820's the city of Berlin began to undergo a slow yet steadily broadening transformation. While civil servants, military officials and members of the nobility centered around the Hohenzollern court and the Prussian administration, the University of Berlin, founded by the initiative of Wilhelm von Humboldt, provided a meeting ground for scholars and intellectuals. Professors and aristocrats met and carried on their debates in famous literary salons. Yet under the quiet surface of this pious and outwardly peaceful Biedermeier time the social structure of Berlin society changed slowly. Hardly noticed by the upper classes, the change was a matter of the poorer parts of the population.