by the gallant warriors of 1813-15 ring
once more along the length and breadth of
the land. It is, therefore, at this moment,
when singing on all occasions his patriotic
song, Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland?
(What is the German's Fatherland?) and
feeling all the pristine intensity of the
words, Wo jeder Franzmann heiszet Feind
(Where every Frenchman is called Foe),
there is surely no man whose name rises
oftener into the people's minds than Ernst
Moritz Arndt.

And who was this man whom the populace
loved so reverentially that his familiar
appellation among them was Vater Arndt
(Father Arndt)?

Ernst Moritz Arndt was born December
26th, 1769, at Schoritz, in the island of
Rügen. His father, who was a Swede of
low extraction, was a nobleman's steward,
who, by his own exertions, had raised
himself in life. Owing to the straitened
circumstances of Arndt's parents, and also to
the remote part of the country in which they
lived, he was not sent to school early in life.
A very strict, even stern, discipline was,
however, maintained in the family, and in
the autumn and winter months, when the
parents had less to do, they held a kind of
school with their children. The father
taught writing and arithmetic, the mother
superintended the reading, which did not,
however, extend beyond the hymn-book
and the Bible. Arndt's mother needed
singularly little sleep—a peculiarity he
inherited from her, and gained him the
nickname "lark" among his brothers and
sisters; and so it happened that he would
often sit up talking and reading with her
till past midnight. In the summer and
spring there was little schooling for the
children, except what they could learn in
the fields and woods; and at the time when
all hands had to assist, the elder boys—
and Ernst was the eldest of all—had to
lend a helping hand.

In 1780, the Arndt family changed their
dwelling-place for a north-western corner
of the island, not far from Stralsund, and
here a master was engaged for the children.
In 1787, Ernst was sent to the Gymnasium
at Stralsund, where he was at once placed in
the second class, which showed that his
acquirements were rather above than below
the average. After this he was sent to the
University of Greifswald to study theology.
Here he remained for two years, then went
to Jena to continue his studies there, but
after some months returned home to assist
in the education of his brothers and sisters.
At the same time he began to preach in the
neighbourhood, and with such good effect
that he might soon have received an
excellent living. But he turned himself away
from these prospects, and wished to throw
up theology. He wanted to see the world;
and at last, by the assistance of his father,
he was enabled to undertake, in 1798, an
eighteen months' journey through Hungary,
Austria, Italy, and France, returning home
by Brussels, Frankfort, and Berlin.

Then, after many considerations as to
his future career, he settled as privat
docent in Greifswald, married a daughter
of one of the professors, and was in 1805
created professor himself. He was then
already a widower.

It was at this period of his life that
Arndt first began to be a political writer.
The events of the time roused his hot blood
and filled him with anger against the
French, and his first pamphlet, Germanien
und Europa, he himself entitles as
"nothing but a wild and fragmentary bubbling
forth of his opinions on the world's position
in 1802."

His next literary work, Geschichte der
Leibeigenschaft in Pomern und Rügen
(History of Serfdom in Pomerania and
Rügen), which excited great animosity
among the German nobility, was destined
to acquaint him with the pleasures and
woes to which an author was subjected in
those times.

The work was directed against a trade
in human beings then still carried on in
these countries, the perpetrators of which
took deep offence at the book.

"Some of them," says Arndt in his
autobiography," gave the book into the
hands of my king, Gustav Adolf the
Fourteenth, and showed him, underlined with
red, several places in the same where I had
made some, as they thought, too free and
unseemly remarks about long since
deceased rulers of Sweden. The gentlemen
would have liked to involve me in an action
for high treason. The king, in his first
anger, had sent the book with its dangerous
red pencil-marks to the then Governor
of Pomerania, and Chancellor of the
University of Greifswald, Freiherr von
Essen, with the command to bring the
bold author to account. General von Essen
invited me to Stralsund; he indicated to
me who were my prosecutors, and showed
me the red danger marks with the question,
'How I meant to help myself in this ugly
business, for the king seemed very angry
and disgusted?' I begged for the book