indicated a growing antisemitism. In the summer of 1922, he met and began a love affair with Else Janke, a schoolteacher. After revealing to him that she was half-Jewish, Goebbels stated the "enchantment [was] ruined". He continued to see her on and off until 1927.
He continued for several years to try to become a published author. His diaries, which he began in 1923 and continued for the rest of his life, provided an outlet for his desire to write. The lack of income from his literary works (he wrote two plays in 1923, neither of which sold) forced him to take jobs as a caller on the stock exchange and as a bank clerk in Cologne, a job which he detested. He was dismissed from the bank in August 1923 and returned to Rheydt. During this period, he read and was influenced by the works ofOswald Spengler, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Houston Stewart Chamberlain, the British-born German writer whose book The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (1899) was one of the standard works of the extreme right in Germany. According to biographer Peter Longerich, Goebbels' diary entries from late 1923 to early 1924 reflected the writings of a man who was isolated, preoccupied by "religious-philosophical" issues, and lacked a sense of direction. Diary entries of mid-December 1923 forward show Goebbels was moving towards the völkisch nationalist movement.