Freiligrath, FERDINAND, a poet of Germany, was born at Detmold, in the principality of Lippe, 17th June 1810. The favourable reception accorded to his first collection of Poems in 1838 induced him to abandon commercial pursuits and devote himself to literature. From this time onwards he led a very unsettled life. In the poetry of this his earlier period it is the originality both of subject and of treatment, the oriental glow of the diction, the energy of the descriptions, and the finish of form that have secured the poet fame. But about the year 1844 a great change came over the spirit of his writing. Freiligrath was drawn into the political contest of the period as a bold champion and singer of democratic opinions. The publication of his radical Glaubensbekenntniss ('Confession of Faith'), in the same year, compelled him to take refuge in Belgium. In 1846 he repaired to London, and, although two years later he celebrated the revolutionary movement in the poems Die Revolution and Februarklänge, he was nevertheless included in the amnesty of March 19, and returned to Germany, settling at Düsseldorf, where he became the leader of the democratic party. Shortly after, he was impeached on account of his poem,
Die Todten an die Lebenden ('The Dead to the Living'), but after a celebrated trial acquitted, 3d October 1848. Nevertheless, a second prosecution in 1851 compelled him to flee once more, and he again took refuge in London. Nor did he return to Germany until 1868. His last years were spent at Stuttgart and Cannstatt, where he died 18th March 1876. In his later years Freiligrath returned in some respects to the style of his first work, a decided contrast to the somewhat strained and artificial poems of his political period, chief amongst which are Ça Ira! (1846) and Neuere politische und sociale Gedichte (1851). The latest poems were published as Neue Gedichte (1876). Freiligrath is also memorable as a translator from the English, particularly by his renderings of Longfellow, Shakespeare, &c. The popularity of his earliest book, Gedichte, is attested by its reaching a 43d edition in 1883. A complete edition of his works appeared at Stuttgart (6 vols. 1870; 5th ed. 1886). See his Life by Schmidt-Weissenfels (1876), and Buchner (1881).