Ferdinand Freiligrath

Russian revolutionary democrats 1810–1876 ○ Natural causes

Revolutionary poet of 1848, acquitted over "The Dead to the Living", who joined the editorial staff of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung

Born in 1810 at Detmold in the Principality of Lippe, a teacher's son, he trained for commerce before turning to poetry, and his first collection of 1838 made him widely popular. He received a pension from Frederick William IV in 1842 but surrendered it in 1844 and with his Confession of Faith put his poetry at the service of democratic agitation. He met Marx in Belgium, lived in exile in Switzerland and London, and returned with the revolution of 1848 to settle in Düsseldorf. Arrested over his poem "The Dead to the Living", he was acquitted in the first jury trial ever held in Prussia, and in October 1848 he joined the Neue Rheinische Zeitung to run its foreign news. He went back to London in 1851, returned after the amnesty of 1868 and became a nationalist celebrating the victory over France. He died at Cannstatt in 1876.