Even though from now on he showed a growing reluctance ever to leave his hotel, von Schlabrendorf quickly resumed his role as a support and focus of intellectual ideas, both through face to face discussion and through his habit of making generous financial provision to those who turned to him whether they deserved it or (in the view of at least one biographer) not. In his city-centre hotel room he himself led an existence of bizarre austerity. His increasingly eccentric lifestyle led to him being described by friends and admirers as a "Parisian Diogenes" ("Diogenes von Paris"), a soubriquet which according to some observers he rather liked. He was also a regular letter writer. Letters survived, which is one of several reasons that he made a major contribution to the detailed knowledge and understanding of the French revolution across Germany as the nineteenth century progressed towards a more democratic future. That was important because German reformers and revolutionaries who set forth their proposals in 1848, not just in 1848 but also during the decades that followed, drew much of their understanding of the French revolution from the writings of Gustav von Schlabrendorf.