Friedrich von Kinkel

“ Before complying with M. Kuppffer's request, the government has requested the opinion of the academy on the subject. It can not but be favorable. It is pleasant to see the several nations of Europe, in the midst of their fierce political dissensions and struggles for supremacy, thus uniting for the promotion of science.
In this number of the New Monthly will be found an interesting account of the character and life of the distinguished German scholar, Kinkel, who is imprisoned by the Prussian government for his liberal opinions. ”

“ Kinkel is dressed in sackcloth, and his head is shaved. His wedding-ring is taken from him, and every little memento of his wife and children which might afford him consolation. His bed is a sack of straw laid upon a board. He has to scour and clean his cell, and perform every other menial office. Light is allowed him only so long as he toils; and, as soon as the requisite work is done, the light is taken away. ”

“ In short, of all phases of human civilization the Middle Ages seemed to him the most congenial. “You see,” he added with a kindly smile, “I am what you would call a full-blooded reactionary, and I don't believe at all in your liberty and equality and that sort of thing. But that they have put Kinkel, a poet and a sage, into a penitentiary on account of his idealistic imaginings, that is a revolting scandal, and although I am a good conservative Mecklenburger, I am at all times ready to help Kinkel out.” ”

“ He had learned that Lieutenant-Colonel von Wreden, despite General Kinkel's express orders, had rashly evacuated his position at Brunecken and destroyed the bridge of Laditch. Besides, vague rumors had reached him about an insurrection among the peasants in the neighborhood of Innspruck; and even on the surrounding mountains, it was said, bands of armed insurgents had been seen.
"We have treated these miserable peasants by far too leniently and kindly," said General Kinkel, with a shrug ”

“ The popularity which Kinkel enjoyed in his day was hardly justified by his talent; his poetry is of the sweetly sentimental type which was much in vogue in Germany about the middle of the 19th century. ”

“ After having been wounded in the head and taken prisoner by the Prussians, Kinkel was carried first to Karlsruhe, and then after the surrender of Rastatt, to that fortress, where he was to be tried by a court-martial. On the 4th of August Kinkel appeared before that tribunal, which was composed of Prussian officers. Sentences of death were at that time the order of the day. And there is no doubt that, at army headquarters as well as at the seat of the Prussian government, Kinkel's condemnation to death was desired and expected. ”

“ But he was still obliged to spin wool; and when our good Strodtmann, at that time a student in Bonn, appealed to the popular heart in Kinkel's behalf, in a poem called the “Spinning Song,” the young poet was promptly dismissed from the university.
In the meantime the preparations for the trial of those who had taken part in the attack upon the Siegburg armory in May, 1849, went on in Cologne, and early in the year 1850 there was a rumor that the government intended to transport Kinkel from Naugard to Cologne in the spring, for the purpose of having him also tried for that revolutionary attack. ”

“ Even if he had, according to the law, deserved punishment after fighting in a lost cause, the sound sense and the human sympathy of many of his opponents revolted at the brutal arbitrariness which, overriding the obvious sense of a court-martial verdict, would not only punish, but degrade him and bury him amid the dregs of the human kind. Even death, which would have left to him his dignity as a man, would have seemed less inhuman than such an “act of grace.”
Kinkel was first taken to the prison at Bruchsal in Baden, and soon afterwards to the penitentiary at Naugard in Pomerania. ”

“ As was to be expected, the authorities had taken every possible measure to prevent an attempt to liberate Kinkel in Cologne. The government had meanwhile also resolved not to take him back to the penitentiary at Naugard, but to imprison him in Spandau, probably because in Naugard warm sympathies with the sufferer had manifested themselves. To mislead Kinkel's friends and to avoid all difficulties on the way, he was not, as generally expected by the public, transported by rail, but in a coach, accompanied by two police officers. ”

“ Kinkel was therefore reproached with giving to the cause of the revolution too little, and to his family interests too much of his time and care, and it was said that he was all the more to blame, as he owed his liberation in a high degree to the helpfulness of his democratic friends. ”

“ Kinkel should have been sentenced to six years' confinement as a state prisoner. This sentence is accordingly passed upon the other prisoners; and with a wise and commendable clemency many are set free after a short time. But as Dr. Kinkel is a man of high education and celebrity, it is thought best to give him a very severe punishment, according to the old ignorance of what is called "making an example," as if this sort of example did not provoke and stimulate, rather than deter others ”

“ But as morning dawned, wind and sea became more lively and Kinkel reported himself seasick. The wind increased, the sea ran higher, and Kinkel grew more and more miserable as the day progressed. He gathered himself up to go on deck, but soon returned to his berth. I tried to lift him up, but in vain. After a few hours of acute suffering he became quite desperate in his torment and he felt that he was going to die. He had a mind to tell the captain to carry him to the nearest port. ”

“ The turnkey thought Kinkel's lot indeed very deplorable. It would be a good work to alleviate it a little—perhaps not impossible, but perilous. He would consider what might be done. At the close of our conversation I slipped a ten-thaler note into his hand with the request that he buy with it some nourishing food for Kinkel if he could transmit it to him without danger. I intimated that business affairs required me to leave Spandau, but that I would return in a few days, to hear what report he could give about the condition of the prisoner. ”

“ Kinkel certainly was not free from ambition, nor from illusory hopes of a speedy change in the Fatherland. But his first and most natural aim was to make a living for his family in London. This claimed his activity so much that he could not, to so great an extent as he might have wished, take part in the doings of the refugees, a great many of whom had no regular occupation. ”

“ Before Kossuth began his agitation in America, Kinkel had returned from there. He had much to tell of the new world that was good and beautiful, although he was obliged to confess to himself that the practical result of his mission was discouragingly trifling. With robust energy he resumed his interrupted activity as a teacher, and with him the old sunshine returned to the Kinkel home. ”

“ Instruction itself has been more courted and made more welcome since it took courage to cast aside its cumbrous wig and gown, and ventured to appear before the world with the natural graces of pure humanity.
Professor Kinkel, to whom we owe the work whose title is placed at the foot of the present article, is in every respect a specimen, and perhaps a prototype, of the German professor of the nineteenth century. To the deep and solid learning of a former generation, he adds the good taste and social accomplishments indispensable in these more advanced times. ”

“ Gottfried Kinkel, now, besides his other honors and emoluments, and private earnings, is installed as a salaried professor in the University of Bonn. It can not be but such a man must awake, and take an interest in these continental revolutions which are boiling up all round him. ”

“ The Castle of Popplesdorf commands the most beautiful views of some of the most beautiful parts of Rhenish Prussia; and the very best point from which to look at them, is the window of the room that used to be the study of Dr. Gottfried Kinkel. That used to be—and is not now—alas, the day! But we must not anticipate evils; they will come only too soon in their natural course.
In this room, his library and study, we called to see Dr. Kinkel. There he sat—dressing-gown, slippers, and cloud-compelling pipe. ”

“ And if ancient art and ancient poetry especially, with their mournful back-glances at the olden majesty long past and gone, come over us with emotions something like those of eventide, when the last parting gleam of the brilliant sun is fast setting behind the distant hills, so in their opposite aspect, as hope, turning its bold, enthusiastic eye toward the future, they may smile upon us as the rosy dawn which runs before the rising sun of truth, and that new time which is to shine and glow in its beams—or as the first beautiful ray of enthusiastic promise. ”

“ We entered the hotel through a back door and soon found ourselves in a room in which Kinkel was to put on the clothes that we had bought for him—a black cloth suit, a big bear-skin overcoat, and a cap like those worn by Prussian forest officers. From a room near by sounded the voices of the revelers. Krüger, who had stood a few minutes looking on while Kinkel was exchanging his convict's garb for an honest man's dress, suddenly went out with a peculiarly sly smile. ”

“ A police agent, who described the threatening dangers in a pamphlet written for the purpose of terrifying the timid bourgeois, called me an especially daring revolutionist, who in his old fatherland had already committed the most frightful outrages. To illustrate this, he narrated the liberation of Kinkel, describing him with the most fabulous fabrications as an uncommonly detestable criminal. To these circumstances I owed my arrest and my exile from France, in spite of my modest and retired conduct during my stay there. ”

“ Then a thundering cheer broke forth in the hall, which was taken up by the multitude outside and resounded in the streets far into the city. Frau Kinkel pressed through the crowd to her husband. A police officer ordered his subordinates who surrounded Kinkel to hold her back, but Kinkel, rising to his full height, cried out with a commanding voice, “Come, Johanna! Give your husband a kiss. Nobody shall forbid you.” As if yielding to a higher power the police officers stepped back and made way for the wife, who threw herself into her husband's arms. ”

“ In 1858, writing Kinkel from Milwaukee, he wondered a little over his steady rise in reputation, modestly explaining it as due to American curiosity in “a German who, as they declare, speaks English better than they do, and also has the advantage over their native politicians of possessing a passable knowledge of European conditions.” It was, of course, really due to appreciation of his eloquence, versatility, mental power, and enthusiasm for liberal principles. ”

“ If we could conceive an age or country where religion should entirely cease and be forgotten—where not only all positive faith and revelation, but even the universal belief in a Divinity above them, should die away and perish among men—the light of all higher and heaven-directed thoughts and aims should become extinct—that echo of eternity and of eternal love which the inmost feelings of the human soul spontaneously gives back, should be hushed forever—then and there at the self-same moment would all high art be withdrawn and disappear. ”

“ Then I acquainted the company of refugees in the inn with the circumstances of our escape from Rastatt. From them I learned also for the first time that Kinkel had been captured by the Prussians in a fight near the fortress, before the beginning of the siege. When we left the Palatinate and he could no longer make himself useful in the offices of the provisional government, he had joined a battalion of volunteers and shouldered his musket as a private soldier. Thus he would share the lot of the revolutionary army. ”

“ He was not only at that time the editor of a democratic paper, but also the leader of the democratic club in Cologne, and I could safely count upon it that if anybody cherished a purpose to liberate Kinkel during the impending trial for the Siegburg affair, he would certainly know it all. Becker told me with the utmost frankness what had been planned and that all the world talked about “something that must be done.” It became clear to me at once that if all the world talked about it, an attempt could not possibly succeed, and I was rejoiced to hear Becker himself share this conviction. ”

“ Our democratic club was composed in almost equal parts of students and citizens, among whom there were many of excellent character, of some fortune and good standing, and of moderate views, while a few others had worked themselves into a state of mind resembling that of the terrorists in the French Revolution. Kinkel was the recognized leader of the club, and I soon became a member of the executive committee. At first the establishment of a constitutional monarchy with universal suffrage and well-secured civil rights would have been quite satisfactory to us. ”

“ His hatred of tyrants has quickly calmed down, his enthusiasm for war has subsided, behind the counters of a bank, where he deposited the money, collected for the revolution, "on interest," much to the satisfaction of the despots! Was there ever a man who claimed the confidence of his country people more obtrusively, and has ever any one betrayed it more basely than this Kinkel? No man could have acted thus who had the least conception of honor, and who had the least regard for the respect of respectable people. And yet, did not Mr. Kinkel become the ideal man, for this entire emigration? ”

“ His majesty has graciously deigned to affirm the sentence, with the qualification that Kinkel shall undergo imprisonment in a civil penitentiary. According to this most high order, I affirm the verdict of the court-martial, to the effect that Kinkel is to be punished on account of treason with the loss of the Prussian cockade and with imprisonment for life, and that in execution of this sentence he shall be taken to a house of penal servitude ”