FREILIGRATH, FERDI*AND, a brilliant lyric poet of Germany, was b. at Detmold, in the principality of Lippe, 17th June, 1810. He attended the high school in his native town till the year 1823, when lie entered a merchant's office, first at Soest, and after wards at Amsterdam. Encouraged by the favorable reception of his pooras, he aban doned mercantile pursuits, married, and removed to Darmstadt. In a pension was bestowed upon him by the king of Prussia, whereupon lie removed to St. Goar, on the Rhine. This circumstance. and his poem At's Spanien, deprived him of the sym pathy of the liberal party, which, however, was restored to him twofold when, in 1844, he gave up his pension, and in his political poems attached himself to the democratic party. The publication of his Glaubenshekeentniss (Confession of Faith), in the same year, compelled him to take refuge abroad. He went to Belgium, Switzerland, and in 1846, to London, where he resumed his mercantile pursuits, and became correspondent for the banking-house of Huth & Co. He was about to accept an invitation to America, sent him by Longfellow, when the events of 1848 recalled him to his native country. F. settled in Dusseldorf, where he became the most important member of the democratic party, and sang the praises of deMocratic socialism. He was impeached on account of his poem Die Todten an die Lebendcn (The Dead to the Living). The interest felt in this trial was extraordinary. F. was defended by celebrated advocates, who did not fail
to ridicule the folly shown in prosecuting a man for writing poetry. The doctrine that the poet is a "chartered libertine" in the expression of his sentiments, carried the day, and F. was acquitted, 3d Oct., 1848. The consequence was inevitable. His poem immediately became the rage; the first edition was sold off in Dusseldorf within a few hours. A second prosecution induced F. again to withdraw from his native country, and from 1849 to 1868 lie resided in London. In the latter year, lie returned to Ger many, and made Stuttgart his home. Several songs, written by him there at the begin ning of the Franco-German war, have attained great popularity. F.'s principal produc tions are his Gediehte (1838; 27th ed. 1871); ('a ira! (1846); Die 1?..xolutton (184S); and Neuere politische and seeiale Gediehte (1849). Complete editions of his works appeared at New York (6 vols. 1838-59), and at Stuttgart (6 vols. 1870; 2d ed. 1871). F.'s poems display lively imagination, fire, and melody of rhythm, a richness of execution, and a picturesque originality of style, which not seldom, however, passes into eccentricity and merely "spasmodic" force of expression. His translations from English poets are admirable. F. died at Cannstadt, near Stuttgart, on Mar. 18, 1876.