Georg Julius Justus Sauerwein (15 January 1831 in Hanover – 16 December 1904 in Kristiania)[2] was a German publisher, polyglot, poet, and linguist.

He stayed frequently in Spreewald near Berlin and in Memel (Klaipėda) and Tilsit, where he stood forth as poet, public orator and politician.

He was accused of being in league both with the Welfish (separatist for re-establishing the independent Kingdom of Hanover) and the Pan Slavonic cause; both considered by the governors to be a threat to German culture and identity.

In vain he claimed to the contrary that he served his nation by trying to remove the very circumstance that nourished the Pan Slavonic movement — the suppression of minorities.

In accordance with the Romantic spirit, Sauerwein believed that poetry was rooted in popular tradition and that fresh literature could be based on minority languages.

Moreover, in Norway, he had access to a free press and by the turn of the previous century, he was often given space in Norwegian publications to report on the conditions in Lithuania and Lusatia.

Out of the last thirty years of his life (1874–1904), Sauerwein spent 11 in Norway — mostly in Dovre, which he characterized as “my winter sanatorium and laboratory of mental effusions”, but he also stayed increasingly in the capital Christiania (Oslo).

The poet pays his tribute to the free Norwegian society and dare rebuke the lack of such freedom in Germany without risking censorship.