FOLLEN, CHARLES THEODORE CHRISTIAN, PH.D., LL.D. ; 1795-1840; b. Hesse-Darm• stadt, Germany; a clergyman and reformer. He was educated at Giessen, where he distinguished himself by his enthusiasm in the cause of liberty, and fell under suspicion of the authorities as a promoter of revolution. In 1814, he joined the army raised to resist Napoleon, but returned to his studies at the close of the campaign. In 1818, he was appointed by the university lecturer on jurisprudence. His advanced views of human rights and his frankness in avowing them brought him into difficulties, and he left Giessen for Jena, where a similar fortune awaited him. He was accused of com plicity in the assassination of Kotzebue, and was twice arrested, but after the strictest examination was honorably acquitted. He afterwards found it necessary to take refuge in Switzerland, where he was appointed professor of Latin in the cantonal school at Coire, in the Grisons. This post he was soon forced to resign on account of‘the alleged anti-Calvinistic tendency of his teaching. He was next appointed lecturer upon law and metaphysics at the university of Basel. The German government demanded his surrender as a revolutionist. This demand was twice refused, but upon its renewal for
the third time the Swiss authorities yielded and endeavored to arrest him, but escaping through Paris to Havre, he sailed for the United States, where he was Warmly welcomed. In 1825, he was appointed a teacher of German at Harvard college, and, three years later, became teacher of ecclesiastical history and ethics in the divinity school. From 1830 to 1835, he was professor of German literature at Harvard. Later on, he preached in the first Unitarian church of New York city, and in 1839 accepted a call to the pas-, torate of a church of the same denomination in Lexington, Mass. From the commence ment of the anti-slavery movement he was an avowed abolitionist ands warm friend and associate of Garrison. His fearless opinions on this question made him very unpopular in his adopted country, but after suffering banishment from his native laud for his love of liberty, he found it difficult to reconcile the American declaration of independence with the systematic enslavement of the negro. He lost his life in the burning of the steamboat Lexington on Long Island sound, Jan. 13, 1840.