Ernst Moritz Arndt

Born Dec. 26, 1769, in Schoritz on the island of Rügen; died Jan. 29, 1860, in Bonn. German writer.

After graduating from the University of Jena, Arndt became a professor of history. He took part in the struggle against Napoleon (1806). Arndt fled to Russia in 1812 and returned to Germany in 1813. Arndt’s political position was characterized by antifeudal ideas. He was the ideologist of the war of liberation against Napoleon but had a narrowly nationalistic tendency, for which F. Engels criticized him. In 1848, Arndt was elected deputy to the Frankfurt National Assembly, but he went no further than demanding a constitutional monarchy. He is the author of A History of Serfdom in Pomerania and on the Island of Rügen (1803), Songs for Germans (1813), Military Songs (1815), and a collection of articles entitled The Spirit of the Times (vols. 1–4, 1806–18). Arndt’s best verses have held theirplace in German poetry. In 1840 he published an autobiography, Memoirs of My Outer Life.