Charlotte Paulsen frequently discussed the issues that concerned them both with her new son in law. Conservative leaders who imposed a return to their version of the old order at Vienna in 1814 and 1815 had not been able to bury the ideas of enlightenment humanity and rationalism which French revolutionary armies and the administrative genius of Napoleon had disseminated across Europe during the preceding 25 years. The 1830s might have been the age of Biedermeier, but this was also the decade of the "Vormärz". Régime change in Paris in 1830 was followed by a wave of protests across Germany. Julius Lorentzen instilled in Charlotte Paulsen a new awareness of democratic thoughts and ideas. Their discussions covered Theology, Philosophy and contemporary developments. But then Lorentzen died young, in 1837. Christian and Charlotte Paulsen now adopted a daughter, Marie Paulsen, and Charlotte engaged in her second daughter's education with the intensity that she had applied to the education of Elisabeth. Outside the house, politically conscious women were being caught up in civil protests and the programmes for liberal reform that were now emerging, together with demands for democratic rights for citizens, including women. Elisabeth Paulsen also felt under pressure that she, too, should be "doing more". Later she decided to set up the "Weiblichen Verein für Armen- und Krankenpflege" ("Women's Association for the Care of the Poor and Sick") which had been set up in Hamburg by the formidably energetic Amalie Sieveking in 1832, as a response to the Cholera epidemic of that year. However, Sieveking rejected her approaches, finding Paulsen too much of a "free thinker". It grated with Sieveking that even if Paulsen's motives were honorable, humanist and rational, they seemed not to be overwhelmingly Christian.