His plans of habilitation at the University of Dresden were abandoned in the face of continuing public outrage over the influence in academia of Jews, socialists, and feminists. The next few years he spent as a substitute teacher and lecturer. In 1906 he travelled to Göttingen in order to obtain a habilitation under Edmund Husserl. This plan also came to nothing, but resulted briefly in a position as theatre critic for the "Göttinger Zeitung"; his critical notes were later collected in book form as "Nachtkritiken".