The New Student's Reference Work/Arndt, Ernest Moritz

Arndt (ärnt), Ernest Moritz, a German poet and patriot, was born in 1769 on the island of Rügen. The son of a former serf, he yet received a good education with a view of entering the ministry; but after traveling over a great part of Europe he became professor of history at Greifswald. He assisted in the abolition of serfdom by his writings; and an attack on Napoleon in another work compelled Arndt to flee to Stockholm after the battle of Jena. Returning after a few years to Germany, he was active in stirring up the national feeling of his countrymen and in preparing them to throw off the foreign yoke. His songs, poems and other writings kept up the spirit of the Germans during the war of liberation. His famous song, Was ist das Deutschen Vaterland (What is the German Fatherland), is sung wherever German is spoken. In January 1818, he became professor of history in the then new University of Bonn, from which position he was suspended because of his energy and reforms, but restored in 1840. He was at one time a member of the national assembly. Vigorous in mind and body, beloved by the whole German nation as Father Arndt, he died at the age of 90 in January, 1860.