The intensive development started when Fürstenberg married Göthilda Magnus in the Gothenburg Synagogue on May 31, 1880. Pontus had long been in love with her, but they were forbidden to be together by Göthilda's father, the rich banker and financier Edvard Magnus. He considered that his rich daughter shouldn't spend time with a "hunchbacked man ten years older than she," which Pontus was. Magnus also thought that the Fürstenberg wealth was too small. But Pontus and Göthilda met in secret anyway, and when Edvard died in 1879, they were free to marry.