His mother seems to have brought him up in as carefree a condition as possible, sparing for him from her scanty meals, and allowing him the greatest possible liberty in the disposition of his time, the choice of a calling, etc.

With some changes, a treatment of her relations to him may be found in his short story, “Frau Regel Amrain und ihr jüngster” (in the collection Die Leute von Seldwyla).

Jacob Wittmer Hartmann characterizes these six years at Zürich (1842–48) as a time of almost total inactivity, when Keller inclined strongly toward radicalism in politics, and was also subject to too much temptation and indulged himself.

Hartmann claims it was chiefly this stay in Berlin which molded Keller's character into its final shape, toned down his rather bitter pessimism to a more moderate form, and prepared him (not without the privations of hunger), in the whirl of a large city, for an enjoyment of the more restricted pleasures of his native Zürich.

Under the influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's doctrine of a return to nature, this book was at first intended to be a short narrative of the collapse of the life of a young artist.

It contains five stories averaging 60 pages each: “Pankraz der Schmoller,” “Frau Regel Amrain und ihr jüngster,” “Die drei gerechten Kammacher,” “Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe,” and “Spiegel das Kätzchen.” Hartmann characterizes two of the stories in Seldwyla Folks as immortal: “Die drei gerechten Kammacher” he views as the most satyric and scorching attack on the sordid petit bourgeois morality ever penned by any writer, and “Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe” as one of the most pathetic tales in literature (Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet plot in a Swiss village setting).

In spite of his often unsympathetic manner, his extreme reserve and idiosyncrasy in dealing with others, he had gained the affection of his fellow townspeople and an almost universal reputation before his death.

With her remaining substantial asset – Villa Belvoir including swing and marketable securities totaling nominally 4 million Swiss Francs – Lydia Escher established the foundation's base.