Carstens was one of his teachers. Gentz’s friend David Gilly, his son Friedrich and Langhans, were colleagues who together with Gentz taught Schinkel (who later collaborated with Gentz). With Friedrich Gilly, Gentz formed the ‘Private Society of Young Architects’, an influential group who debated ideas and critiqued one anothers’ work; Schinkel was another member. Gentz worked with Humboldt on the setting-up of Berlin University, and (closely) with Goethe on a theatre and a palace, bringing an uncluttered simplicity in place of rococo flamboyance; he also got to know Wieland and Schiller in Weimar.