 Shortly after defending his Latin dissertation, De ratione, una, universali, infinita, at Erlangen in 1828 Feuerbach began to lecture on the history of modern philosophy at the conservative university there, many of whose faculty were closely associated with the neo-Pietist Awakening, and, in the case of Julius Friedrich Stahl, who would go on to become a leading theorist of conservatism, also with the so-called “positive philosophy” of the late Schelling. The scathingly satirical and even vulgar couplets (Xenien) directed against the Pietists that Feuerbach appended to his first book, Thoughts on Death and Immortality (1830, hereafter Thoughts; see  Section 2  below), which he published anonymously in 1830, effectively destroyed his prospects for an academic career.