Friedrich Ludwig Lindner (23 October 1772 - 11 May 1845) was a German writer, journalist and physician.
Life
Family provenance
Friedrich Ludwig Lindner was born in Mitau, a prosperous midsized town in Courland (modern day Latvia) which at that time was an increasingly semi-detached territory in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. His father, (1733-1816) was a physician: his mother, born Henriette Marie Wirth (1744–1807), was the daughter of another physician.
Early years
He attended school in Mitau before moving on, in 1790, to start his university-level education, under the sponsorship of Johann Friedrich von Recke, at Mitau's Academia Petrina where he studied theology. In Autumn 1791 he moved on to Jena where, having enrolled to pursue his study of theology, in 1792, he switched to Medicine. One of his fellow medical students at Jena, who became a friend, was David Veit. There were also early literary efforts at this stage which involved the poet Sophie Mereau. From Jena he moved on to Würzburg and Göttingen where he found time to start work on a novel entitled "Die Wanderungen und Schicksale des Paters Abilgärd" ("The wanderings and destinies of Father Abilgärd"). In 1797 he returned to Jena where he concluded his studies with a dissertation for which he received his doctorate in medicine. In 1800 he worked, briefly, in Vienna as a physician. In 1802 he introduced vaccinations against Chickenpox in Brno. At the end of 1803, still from Vienna, he renewed his literary relationship with Sophie Mereau. Working with Joseph Schreyvogel, during this period he co-edited a weekly newspaper in Vienna called "Das Sonntagsblatt" ("The Sunday News sheet"). He remained in Vienna till the end of 1809.
Middle years
In 1809 Lindner abandoned his medical work, which he found insufficiently fulfilling and moved again, traveling via Munich, Regensburg, Nuremberg and Bayreuth. He ended up relocating to Weimar, close to Jena where he had studied as a student, and where he now took a writing job with the polymath publisher Friedrich Justin Bertuch. It was also in 1810 that he visited his uncle, the physician-theologian Gottlob Immanuel Lindner (1734–1818), who had been born (like Lindner's father) in Königsberg, but at this stage lived and worked in Strasbourg. Here he fell seriously ill, which caused him to stay with his uncle for longer than originally planned: he was nursed by a widow whose husband had been a French government official. It was still 1810 when he married Elise, who had been born at Huningue (on the southern tip of Elsaß, close to Basel) in 1789, as Elise Reiffinger. The marriage was childless but not joyless: sources indicate that during their later years Elise Lindner became an unusually influential spouse.
In 1813, by now living in Jena, with a fresh outbreak of fighting, Lindner was officially entrusted with the billeting of francophone troops, partly because he had mastered the French language. As calm returned to the streets he was rewarded for his hitherto unacknowledged teaching work when he was given a post as a university professor of philosophy. Although little is known of his attitude to the respective belligerents in the 25-year "world war" that provided the backdrop for much of his life, it does appear that the successive reverses suffered by the French as their armies were rolled back after October 1813 left him unmoved. However, in 1814 he surrendered his professorship at Jena and returned initially to Weimar and then, with Elise, moved back to his father's home in Courland. He stayed and ran his father's affairs till the latter's death in May 1816.
After the war
In April 1817 Lindner returned to Weimar where he took on the editorship of a newspaper called the "Oppositionsblatt" ("Opposition Newspaper"). However, the backwash from a "press scandal" caused him to leave Weimar later the same year. This resulted from an "indiscretion" involving a secret report written by a man called August von Kotzebue.