"Spirit of the Times," his patriotic trumpet-call aroused Prussians to fight France. Napoleon tracked the lyric poet out; Arndt fled to Sweden; but continued to write for the cause. He returned to Germany, 1809.
¶ "Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland?" remains one of the great semi-religious songs of nations. Arndt asks what comprises the Fatherland? Surely not Prussia, not Swabia, nor this nor that, but all side by side comprise the German brotherhood of race and language.
Where is the German Fatherland? Is't Swabia? Is't Prussia's land? Is't where the grape glows on the Rhine, Where sea-gulls skim the Baltic's brine? Oh, no! more great, more grand Must be the German Fatherland!
¶ Here is a spirited verse from "The God That Lets the Iron Grow":
The God who made earth's iron hoard Scorned to create a slave Hence, unto man the spear and sword In his right hand he gave! Hence him with courage he imbued Lent wrath to Freedom's voice-- That death or victory in the feud Might be his only choice!
¶ "Der Gott, der Eisen wachsen liess," "Was blasen die Trompeten," were on all patriotic lips; at this, William III, mightily offended, had Arndt arrested and sent him into retirement for twenty years.
¶ The old man lived to become a great National hero. He died January 29, 1860, aged 91. It is pleasant to record that on his ninetieth birthday Germany united in good wishes for their national poet of the dark hours.
The people built him a monument at the place of his birth, Schoritz, and another at Bonn, where for many years he had been professor of history.
It is not time, O William, to go to church but to go to war; yet you and your son keep on reading your Gothic Bible.
¶ Now comes the year 1840; William III goes to the tomb of his ancestors, and is succeeded by Fr: William IV, with whom began anew the long battle between the principle of Divine-right of kings and political democracy exercised by the masses. William IV, intensely addicted to Divine-right theories of government, was in the course of a turbulent reign forced to face great political agitators. However, the King had behind his throne, always, that conservative class (found in every country) that clings tenaciously to the past and dreads the future. The watchword of all William's enemies was "Liberty!" The cry, visionary as it was, served as a rallying point for those who favored some form of French constitutionalism; and while, as a whole, the so-called friends of Liberty were very impracticable, had no definite plan for relief, we find among the political agitators foremost in their discontent many of the brightest minds in Germany, college graduates, professional men, the clergy, and solid middle class merchants. All were zealous for immediate political reforms.