 Böhl started his life in Spain at a shop owned by his bourgeois parents.In addition to the work of the store, he was also Hanseatic consul for his hometown Hamburg as well as overseeing the warehouses held by Sir James Duff and his nephew William Gordon at Puerto de Santa María.It was in Cádiz that he met Frasquita Larrea (Francisca Javiera Ruiz de Larrea y Aherán, 1775–1838) a Catholic lady of high society who had travelled through France and Germany and mastered their languages easily, read Shakespeare, was well-versed in the thoughts of Kant and Descartes, read Madame Staël, and delighted in the work of the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft.