Ernst Moritz Arndt 

Ernst Moritz Arndt was a German nationalist historian, writer and poet. He was born on 26th December 1769 in Rugen, Swedish Pomerania and died on 29th January 1860 in Bonn, Germany aged 90.

“Versuch einer Geschichte der Leibeigenschaft in Pommern und Rügen” (An Attempt at a History of Serfdom in Pomerania and Rugen) (1803). 
“Vaterlandslied” (“Der Gott, der Eisen Wachsen Liess” (The God who let Iron Grow) (1812)
“Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland” (What is the Fatherland of the Germans?) (1813)
“Nebenstunden, Beschreibung und Geschichte der Shetländischen Inseln und Orkaden “(Description and History of the Shetland and Orkney Islands) (1820)
“Meine Wanderungen und Wandlungen mit dem Reichsfreiherrn Heinrich Carl Friedrich vom und zu Stein” (My Peregrinations and Metamorphoses together with Reichsfreiherr Heinrich Carl Friedrich vom Stein) (1858)

1769: Ernst Moritz Arndt was born on 26th December in Gross Schoritz, Rugen, Swedish Pomerania, (Now an island off the German Baltic Coast). His father was an emancipated serf who owned a farm and his mother was from a prosperous yeoman family.

1787: The family move to Stralsund where he attends school at the local academy.

1791: He attends the University of Greifswald to study theology and history intending to go into the Lutheran ministry. After the completion of his university studies he returns home and becomes a private tutor for two years to Ludwig Koscgarten’s family who is the pastor of Wittow on the island of Rügen. He also assists Koscgarten in church services.

1793: He moves to Jena in Germany where he is taught by the philosopher Gottlieb Fichte.

1797: He ends his career as a cleric in order to travel through Europe for the next eighteen months. He visits Austria, Hungary, France, Belgium and Italy. On his return home up the River Rhine he is appalled by the sight of all the ruined castles which destruction he attributes to the French. He was originally a supporter of the French Revolution but was appalled by the Reign of Terror and the rise of the Jacobins.

1800: He settles in Greifswald where he becomes a Privatdocent (an assistant lecturer) of history. He publishes “Über die Freiheit der Alten Republiken” (On Freedom in the Old Republic). He marries his first wife.

1801: He publishes in six volumes “Reisen durch einen Theil Deutschlands, Ungarns, Italiens, und Frankreichs in den Jahren 1798/99” (Travels in parts of Germany, Hungary, Italy and France in 1798 and 1799).

1803: He publishes “Germanien und Europa” (Germany and Europe) about his views on French aggression and “Versuch einer Geschichte der Leibeigenschaft in Pommern und Rügen” (An Attempt at a History of Serfdom in Pomerania and Rugen). The arguments in the latter convinced King Gustav the Fourth of Sweden to abolish serfdom in 1806. 

1806: He is appointed to the chair of history at the University of Greifswald.

1808: He publishes the first part of his “Geist der Zeit” (Spirit of the Times) calling on his countrymen to rise up against Napoleon Bonaparte. Because of the popularity of this work he is forced to take refuge in Stockholm, Sweden to escape the French authorities. There he is awarded a government post and he continues to write pamphlets, songs and poems in a similar vein calling for German independence. He returns to Berlin in disguise in December.

1810: He returns to Greifswald University, but only for a few months and again sets off on his travels and meets the military men Leberecht von Blucher and August von Gneisenau amongst many others.

1812: He is asked to go to St Petersburg in Russia to assist in their struggle against France. He continues to write pamphlets and political poetry including the songs “Der Gott, der Eisen wachsen ließ” (The God Who made Iron Grow) otherwise known as “Vaterlandslied“ (Song of the Fatherland), and “Was Blasen Trompeten?” (What Blows the Trumpet?). They all become wildly popular.

1813: In “Der Rhein, Deutschlands Strom, Nicht Deutschlands Gränze” (The Rhine, Germany’s River, Not Germany’s Frontier) he makes the claim that the German language, and therefore Germany itself ,includes Flemish, Dutch and Frisian.

1814: His song “Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland” (What is the German Fatherland) is performed in Berlin.

1817: He marries for the second time.

1818: He is appointed to the chair of modern history at the new University of Bonn. The fourth part of his “Geist der Zeit” is published in which he criticises the policies of the German states.

1819: His demands for reform offend the Prussian government and he is arrested during the summer and his papers confiscated.

1820: He is suspended from his post at the university and although found not guilty by a tribunal he is banned from holding a professorship. They do allow him to be paid a stipend and he spends the next twenty years in forced retirement where he continues writing. He publishes “Nebenstunden, Beschreibung und Geschichte der Shetländischen Inseln und Orkaden” (Description and History of the Shetland and Orkney Islands).

1831: He publishes an anti-Polish pamphlet describing their “barbarity and wildness”. He publishes “Die Frage über die Niederlande” (The Netherlands Question).

1834: His youngest son drowns in the River Rhine.

1840: He is reinstated at the University of Bonn by King Frederick William the Fourth of Prussia. He publishes his autobiography “Erinnerungen aus dem Ausseren Leben” (Recollections from the External Life).

1841: He is appointed as Rector of the University of Bonn.

1846: He publishes “Rhein und Ahrwanderungen” (Wanderings along the Rhine and Ahr).

1848: After the revolution of 1848 he takes a seat as one of the Deputies to the Frankfurt National Assembly. He is one of a group that offers Frederick William the Imperial Crown but when he refuses it Arndt is upset and retires from public life. His statement that “the Poles and the whole Slavonic tribe are inferior to Germans” causes controversy.

1854: He publishes “Pro Populo Germanico” (In Support of the German Population) which was originally intended to form the fifth part of the “Geist der Zeit”.

1858: He publishes “Meine Wanderungen und Wandelungen mit dem Reichsfreiherrn Heinrich Karl Friedrich von Stein” (My Travels and Saunterings with the Baron Heinrich Karl Friedrich von Stein).

1860: He publishes his “Gedichte” (Complete Poems).

Ernst Moritz Arndt died on 29th January 1860 in Bonn, Germany and was buried in the Alter Friedhof (Old Cemetery).

Ernst Moritz Arndt’s was born to a father who had been liberated from serfdom which gave him a lifelong belief in popular empowerment and a strong opposition to aristocratic privilege. In his youth his style was heavily influenced by the works of German writers and poets, including Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, and Johann Heinrich Voss.

His later development was shaped by three primary influences. Firstly, the German Idealist philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte whose cultural nationalism he heard at the University of Jena. He was deeply influenced by Fichte’s emphasis on cultural purity and his strong anti-French sentiment.  Secondly Johann Gottfried von Herder’s Romantic concept of the Volk and language, folklore, and native landscape as the true foundations of national identity appealed to him. Lastly his own extensive travels across Europe largely occupied by Napoleonic armies shaped his practical views. He was particularly appalled in his journey down the River Rhine in the late 1790s by the castles along the way which had been laid to ruin.

In 1800 he settled in Greifswald as assistant lecturer in history and in 1803 published “Germanien und Euopa” in which he proclaimed his views on French aggression. Living in exile in Sweden in 1806 further increased his patriotic nationalism and he made “hatred of the France” a central, moral pillar of his writings. Whilst there he continued to communicate his patriotic ideals to his countrymen in pamphlets, poems and songs. Later in 1812 he worked closely with the Prussian statesman Heinrich Friedrich Karl vom Stein in St. Petersburg organising the final resistance to Napoleon Bonaparte. 

When the University of Bonn was founded in 1818, he was appointed to the chair of modern history. His excessive demands for reform offended the Prussian government and in 1820 he was suspended and was only reinstated in 1840 at the express wish of King Frederick William the Fourth of Prussia.

He married the sister of the theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher and his works show a marked shift toward a stronger Christian and religious focus from that time on. The death of his youngest son by drowning in the Rhine in 1834 also had a major effect on him.

Not all of his lyrical poems were inspired by political ideas and many are religious poems of great beauty but he established his fame as a champion of liberty and German identity. He castigated the spinelessness of the German princes in the face of French hegemonism and called for a collective national moral revival as a necessary prerequisite for German political survival. He believed Germany was wherever the German language was spoken and he was a major proponent of the political philology which flourished in the mid-to-late nineteenth century. When he took a seat as delegate in the Frankfurt Parliament in1848 he continued to stress the historical inevitability that Germany include Schleswig, Holstein, and the Low Countries.

Arndt was as a teacher, mentor, and role model to the young German linguist and ethnologist Wilhelm Bleek profoundly shaping his worldview. His 1803 essay on serfdom directly inspired the Swedish King Gustav the Fourth to abolish the practice in Pomerania and Rügen a few years later. His poetry such as “Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland?” (What is the German Fatherland) along with his other essays ignited patriotic fervour during the anti-Napoleonic Wars of Liberation. Later he had a profound influence on the 1848 Frankfurt Parliament. His nationalistic and liberal writings were inspirational texts for early German student fraternities such as The Burschenschaft Movement who were actively pushing for a unified nation. He was also a major influence on the poet August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben a major figure in the Young Germany Movement. 

In the twentieth century his works were controversially used during both World Wars due to his intense anti-French, anti-Polish, and anti-Semitic sentiments. 

List of works by Arndt.