Otto took up studies in philology at the University of Copenhagen and the University of Kiel. There he became a member of the student fraternity Corps Saxonia [1] and made contact to political circles and started first publications. Later he focused on the art of memory enhancement. After publishing a textbook on his mnemonic system in 1843,[2] he travelled widely in Germany to popularize it. His most notable lectures were given in Leipzig, but also in Prague. A dictionary that substituted mnemonic terms for numbers[3] and a guideline for the use of mnemotechnics in schools[4] which listed some 3,000 mnemotechnically annotated facts from history and geography courses followed in 1844 and 1846, respectively.
The novelty of Otto's "substitution method" was disputed almost immediately,[5][6] his opponents stating it to be just one more derivative of the method proposed by Aimé Paris. However, it received highly favorable reviews as well.[7][8]
Otto subsequently involved himself in the revolutionary events of 1848, and came under police investigation in 1849.[9] Apparently he was the Carl Otto-Reventlow who took over a Cincinnati radical, anti-monarchist periodical for German-speaking exiles, the Hochwächter, in 1857.[10] He appears to have had some contact with Karl Marx, who referred to him in extremely derogatory terms in at least one of his letters.[11]
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