The oldest known text by Hoffmann is a letter to his friend Theodor Gottlieb Hippel from October 1794. At that time, the eighteen-year-old Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann was studying law in his birthplace of Königsberg. However, his true passion lay in the arts. "My music - my painting - my authorship": This triad, articulated in a letter in 1796, represented a unity for him. Even as the lawyer Hoffmann built a career in the Prussian civil service, which eventually brought him to Warsaw as a government councilor in 1804, his interests remained primarily in music and composition, as well as drawing and watercolor painting, theater and concert attendance, and reading; some literary attempts are also known. At the end of 1806, Hoffmann lost his position when the French invaded Warsaw and dissolved the Prussian authorities. In September 1808, he received a new appointment.