Freiligrath, Ferdinand

Ferdinand Freiligrath, (born June 17, 1810, Detmold, Westphalia [Germany]—died March 18, 1876, Cannstatt, near Stuttgart, Ger.), one of the outstanding German political poets of the 19th century, whose verse gave poetic expression to radical sentiments.

After working as an accountant in a bank in Amsterdam (1831–39), Freiligrath abandoned commerce for literature with the success of his first poems, the Romantic Gedichte (1838; “Poems”). Influenced by Victor Hugo, these early poems are characterized by vividly imaginative and evocative exotic scenes and technical virtuosity; they won him a pension from the Prussian king Frederick William IV.

Freiligrath’s views became increasingly radical, however, and in 1844 he renounced the pension upon the publication of his collection of political poems Glaubensbekenntnis (1844; “Statement of Conscience”). His poetry was banned, and he was forced to leave Germany for Belgium and Switzerland and then England. His poems in Ça ira (1846; “This Will Be”) and Neuere politische und soziale Gedichte (1849 and 1851; “Newer Political and Social Poetry”), celebrating the Revolution of 1848, which brought him back to Germany, were even more strongly socialistic and antimonarchical; they are considered to be among the best examples of German revolutionary poetry of the time. The poem Die Toten an die Lebenden (1848; “From the Dead to the Living”) resulted in his arrest for subversion, but he was acquitted. He moved to Cologne, where he formed a long-standing friendship with Karl Marx, with whom he edited the Neue rheinische Zeitung (“New Rhenish Newspaper”). In 1851 he returned to England to escape further political persecution. He was the London manager of the General Bank of Switzerland from 1856 to 1865. In 1868 a public subscription raised in Germany enabled him to return.

Among Freiligrath’s other important works are his translations of the social poetry of William Wordsworth, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Walt Whitman, Robert Burns, Victor Hugo, and Molière.