section_path: Biography/Personality/Private man
section_name: Private man
paragraph_text: Private man
  
  Soon after Gauss's death, his friend Sartorius published the first biography (1856), written in a rather enthusiastic style. Sartorius saw him as a serene and forward-striving man with childlike modesty, but also of "iron character" with an unshakeable strength of mind. Apart from his closer circle, others regarded him as reserved and unapproachable "like an Olympian sitting enthroned on the summit of science". His close contemporaries agreed that Gauss was a man of difficult character. He often refused to accept compliments. His visitors were occasionally irritated by his grumpy behaviour, but a short time later his mood could change, and he would become a charming, open-minded host. Gauss abominated polemic natures; together with his colleague Hausmann he opposed to a call for Justus Liebig on a university chair in Göttingen, "because he was always involved in some polemic."
  
  Gauss's life was overshadowed by severe problems in his family. When his first wife Johanna suddenly died shortly after the birth of their third child, he revealed the grief in a last letter to his dead wife in the style of an ancient threnody, the most personal surviving document of Gauss. The situation worsened when tuberculosis ultimately destroyed the health of his second wife Minna over 13 years; both his daughters later suffered from the same disease. Gauss himself gave only slight hints of his distress: in a letter to Bessel dated December 1831 he described himself as "the victim of the worst domestic sufferings".
  
  By reason of his wife's illness, both younger sons were educated for some years in Celle, far from Göttingen. The military career of his elder son Joseph ended after more than two decades with the rank of a poorly paid first lieutenant, although he had acquired a considerable knowledge of geodesy. He needed financial support from his father even after he was married. The second son Eugen shared a good measure of his father's talent in computation and languages, but had a vivacious and sometimes rebellious character. He wanted to study philology, whereas Gauss wanted him to become a lawyer. Having run up debts and caused a scandal in public, Eugen suddenly left Göttingen under dramatic circumstances in September 1830 and emigrated via Bremen to the United States. He wasted the little money he had taken to start, after which his father refused further financial support. The youngest son Wilhelm wanted to qualify for agricultural administration, but had difficulties getting an appropriate education, and eventually emigrated as well. Only Gauss's youngest daughter Therese accompanied him in his last years of life.
  
  Collecting numerical data on very different things, useful or useless, became a habit in his later years, for example, the number of paths from his home to certain places in Göttingen, or the number of living days of persons; he congratulated Humboldt in December 1851 for having reached the same age as Isaac Newton at his death, calculated in days.
  
  Similar to his excellent knowledge of Latin he was also acquainted with modern languages. At the age of 62, he began to teach himself Russian, very likely to understand scientific writings from Russia, among them those of Lobachevsky on non-Euclidean geometry. Gauss read both classical and modern literature, and English and French works in the original languages. His favorite English author was Walter Scott, his favorite German Jean Paul. Gauss liked singing and went to concerts. He was a busy newspaper reader; in his last years, he used to visit an academic press salon of the university every noon. Gauss did not care much for philosophy, and mocked the "splitting hairs of the so-called metaphysicians", by which he meant proponents of the contemporary school of Naturphilosophie.
  
  Gauss had an "aristocratic and through and through conservative nature", with little respect for people's intelligence and morals, following the motto " mundus vult decipi ". He disliked Napoleon and his system, and all kinds of violence and revolution caused horror to him. Thus he condemned the methods of the Revolutions of 1848, though he agreed with some of their aims, such as the idea of a unified Germany. As far as the political system is concerned, he had a low estimation of the constitutional system; he criticized parliamentarians of his time for a lack of knowledge and logical errors.
  
  Some Gauss biographers have speculated on his religious beliefs. He sometimes said "God arithmetizes" and "I succeeded – not on account of my hard efforts, but by the grace of the Lord." Gauss was a member of the Lutheran church, like most of the population in northern Germany. It seems that he did not believe all dogmas or understand the Holy Bible quite literally. Sartorius mentioned Gauss's religious tolerance, and estimated his "insatiable thirst for truth" and his sense of justice as motivated by religious convictions.