Steinmetz maintained a small cabin overlooking the Mohawk River near Schenectady, New York. Following the Gymnasium Steinmetz went on to the University of Breslau to begin work on his undergraduate degree in 1883. He was on the verge of finishing his doctorate in 1888 when he came under investigation by the German police for activities on behalf of a socialist university group and articles he had written for a local socialist newspaper, then a popular ideological pursuit among secular German Jews.