Gervinus was a close friend of Georg Friedrich Fallenstein, the father of Helene Fallenstein, who would become the mother of the famous scholar, Max Weber. In her biography of Weber, Marianne Weber, his wife, writes that Helene was sexually molested and probably raped by Gervinus, who was living upstairs in the Fallenstein household after Fallenstein's death. The biography describes Gervinus as a "fatherly friend" of Fallenstein's daughters who regularly read Homer to the girls in their youth. "When she was 16," Marianne Weber writes, "a chaste, closed bud of a girl, Gervinus, whom she respected as a teacher, loved like a father, and had trusted for years, one day lost control of himself. The aging man suddenly engulfed the unsuspecting girl with the searing heat of a passion beyond control. She was torn by horror, disgust, pity, and her old grateful devotion to her fatherly friend and teacher. Because her nerves were delicate, she came close to a breakdown. Helene never got over this shock. From that moment on she regarded physical passion as guilt-laden and sub-human. Even when she was an old woman, the memory of that experience would bring an expression of horror to her face." Soon thereafter, the biography continues, Helene met Max Weber Sr. Engagement soon followed, and Helene subsequently described their marriage (which over time would become an unhappy one) as having saved her from the trauma of the Gervinus assault.