Ferdinand Freiligrath (17 June 1810 – 18 March 1876) was a German poet, translator and liberal agitator, who is considered part of the Young Germany movement.
After publishing translations of Victor Hugo's Odes and Chants du crépuscule, and launching a literary journal, Rheinisches Odeon (1836–38), in 1837 he started working as a bookkeeper in Barmen, where he remained until 1839.
He is defeated in battle, sold as a slave and ends up as a drummer in a circus, only the lion's skin he wore that now decorates the drum still reminding him of his previous life.
In 1842, when Longfellow was taking a rigorous water cure at a health spa in the former Marienberg Benedictine Convent at Boppard on the Rhine, a fellow patient introduced him to Freiligrath at the latter's home in St. Goar.
There followed many meetings and outings in Germany where this topic was discussed, and Longfellow presented Freiligrath with copies of his books Hyperion and Ballads and Other Poems.
In 1844, he surrendered his pension, and in his Glaubensbekenntnis (Confession of Faith) placed his poetic gifts at the service of the democratic agitation that was to culminate in the Revolution of 1848.
[citation needed] From there, he proceeded to Switzerland and then to London, publishing in 1846 Englische Gedichte aus neuerer Zeit, a volume of translations, and Ça ira, a collection of political songs.
German composer Elise Schmezer set Freiligrath’s text to music in her Lieder, Romanzen und Balladen fur Tenor, opus 4.
[citation needed] He remained in London until 1868,[2] supporting himself by office work and poetic translations, among which were an anthology, the Rose, Thistle, and Shamrock (1854), Longfellow's Hiawatha (1857), and Shakespeare's Cymbeline and The Winter's Tale.
[1] His 1848 poem In Kümmernis und Dunkelheit attributed military symbolism to the colors of the German tricolor flag (which at the time stood only for the nation, not any political entity): the black was for gunpowder, the red for blood and the yellow the glow given off by the fire.