Ernst Arndt Biography

Dromo's Den

ARNDT, Ernst Moritz (1769-1860). A distinguished German poet and patriot. He was born at Schoritz, which was then in Sweden, Dec. 26, 1769. His father had been a serf, but achieved a sturdy peasant independence, and designed Arndt for the ministry. He has described his early years delightfully in Märchen und Jugenderinnerungen (1818). He studied at Greifswald and Jena and was influenced especially by Goethe, Fichte, Klopstock, Bürger, and Voss. After he left the university he made journeys in Austria, Hungary, France, and Italy, and published an account of these travels in 1802. The first of his many political services was rendered in his book, Versuch einer Geschichte der Leibeigenschaft in Pommern und Rügen (1803), which contributed greatly to the mitigation and partial abolition of serfdom. He became privatdocent at Greifswald in 1880, and was made professor there in 1806. After the battle of Jena he fled to Sweden, whence he continued stirring appeals against Napoleon, under the title Der Geist der Zeit. He returned after three years to his professorial work. In 1812 he sought refuge in Russia, called thither by Baron von Stein, the great German statesman, who was there organizing the agitation against Napoleon. Arndt's finest poems-among them "Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland," and "Der Gott der Eisen wachsen liess"-belong to this period; also stirring appeals in prose, such as Deutscher Volkskatechismus (1812); Was bedeutet Landwehr und Landsturm? (1813); Der Rhein, Deutschlands Strom aber nicht Deutschlands Grenze (1813); collated in Schriften für und an meine lieben Deutschen (3 vols., 1845). After the French disaster in Russia (1812), he returned to Prussia, in which his hopes of German unity centred, and gave himself up to the agitation that resulted in the War of Liberation, which culminated in the battle of Leipzig (1813). In 1817 he married a sister of the great liberal preacher and philosophic theologian, Schleiermacher, and in 1818 was made professor of history in the newly established university at Bonn. As his liberal views were at variance with the government's reactionary policy, he was soon suspended (1820) and passed the next 20 years in honorable and honored retirement, writing historical essays of minor value, and his interesting Erinnerungen aus meinem äussern Leben (Leipzig, 1840). On his accession to the Prussian throne, Frederick William IV restored Arndt to his professorship (1840). German unity was still his dream. He took a lively interest in the events of 1848 and was one of the deputation to offer to the Prussian King the Imperial Crown of Germany. The ninetieth birthday of Father Arndt, as he had come to be called, was celebrated throughout his still disunited country; a month later he died at Bonn, Jan. 29, 1860. Eleven years later the ideal of his life was realized by the proclamation of the German Empire at Versailles. Arndt was neither a great scholar nor a great poet, but he was a noble character and a manly patriot. Editions of his war songs are numberless. His Erinnerungen form the basis of E. M. Seeley's Life and Adventures of E. M. Arndt (1879). There are German Lives by Schenkel (2d ed., Elberfeld, 1869); Langenberg (Bonn, 1869); and Baur (Hamburg, 1882); R. Thiele (Gütersloh, 1894) ; G. Lange, Der Dichter Arndt (Berlin, 1910); P. Meinhold, Arndt (Berlin, 1910); and a volume of Arndts Letters to a Friend (Briefe en eine Freundin), edited by Langenberg (Berlin, 1878). The publication of his Works was begun in 1892 by H. Rösch and H. Meisner.

The New International Encyclopaedia Vol II. (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 165.