 He returned to the House of Berens in Riga, where they evidently forgave him his failure. He fell in love with Christoph Berens’ sister, Katharina, but was refused permission to marry her by his friend, on the grounds of his religious conversion; Berens was an enthusiastic follower of the Enlightenment and was nauseated by the more pious manifestations of Hamann’s new-found religiosity. Smarting from this blow and its motivations, Hamann returned to his father’s house in Königsberg, where he lived for the rest of his life until his final months.