ABSTRACT
Nevertheless List regarded his work as secretary of the Union of Merchants as one of his most important achievements. In 1828 he wrote to Ernst Weber from Reading in Pennsylvania that he had recently been to Philadelphia where he had seen some Hamburg newspapers. "I cannot describe my feelings. As soon as I got back I looked again at the correspondence of the Union of Merchants which has been lying in a corner for the last three years. What memories! Those were indeed golden days of hope. "167
