Gottfried Kinkel

Independent activity Russian revolutionary democrats 1815–1882 → Died in exile

Bonn poet who joined the Baden-Palatinate rising of 1849, was sentenced to life and escaped from Spandau with Carl Schurz's help

Born at Oberkassel in 1815, he studied theology but turned to the history of art, became extraordinary professor at Bonn in 1846 and won a name as a poet. In 1848, with his wife Johanna and his student Carl Schurz, he ran the Bonner Zeitung and founded the Bonn Democratic Association, and in February 1849 he was elected to the Prussian lower house. After the attack on the Siegburg arsenal in May 1849 he joined the Baden-Palatinate rising, was wounded and captured at Muggensturm, and a Prussian court martial sentenced him to life, which made him a martyr of the revolution. In November 1850 Schurz freed him from Spandau prison and he reached London, where among the exiles he opposed Marx and Engels. In 1866 he became professor of art history at the Zurich Polytechnikum, where he died in 1882.

Also known as: Johann Gottfried Kinkel