2-888-572 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Professor Kinkel, from a lithograph published at Berlin, 1850. 'Gottfried Kinkel, Professor of History in the University of Bonn, was one of the more eminent among the literary men of Germany who mistook the Revolution of 1848 for the beginning of a new social era, threw himself into the political agitation of the time, for which his powers were unfit, and finally joined the insane revolt in Baden, in May, 1849, which ended in the dispersion of the revolutionary army, or rather mob, by the Prussian troops, and the restoration of the legal Government....How a man of learning, genius, and refinement, like Kinkel, could mix himself up with such a band of coarse ruffians, using the cant of political regenerators to cover the acts of thieves, is difficult to explain...A fortnight since, it was rumoured he had escaped from Spandau, the last place of his detention'. From "Illustrated London News", 1850.