The influence of English ideas, so potent a factor in the lives of Voltaire, Rousseau, Talleyrand and many others in the 18th century, was therefore potently operative in the early career of Stein. He does not seem to have gone to any school except in 1773, when he went with a private tutor to the University of Göttingen in Hanover. There, he studied jurisprudence and found time to pursue his studies in English history and politics. The latter, as he wrote, confirmed his predilection for that nation.