Johann Gottfried Kinkel (11 August 1815 – 13 November 1882) was a German poet also noted for his revolutionary activities and his escape from a Prussian prison in Spandau with the help of his friend Carl Schurz.

[1] Changing his religious opinions, he abandoned theology and delivered lectures on the history of art, in which he had become interested on a journey to Italy in 1837.

In 1843, he married Johanna Mockel (1810–1858), a writer, composer and musician who assisted her husband in his literary work and revolutionary activities.

Kinkel joined the armed rebellion in the Palatinate in 1849, believing himself to be acting legally in obedience to the directives of the Frankfurt Parliament.

[1] Among his other works were the tragedy Nimrod (1857), and Geschichte der bildenden Künste bei den christichen Völkern (A history of visual arts among Christians, 1845), Die Ahr: Landschaft, Geschichte und Volksleben (Landscape, history and life of the people along the Ahr, 1845), and Mosaik zur Kunstgeschichte (1876).

Kinkel's escape from Spandau is briefly dramatized in the third part ("Little Germanies") of Engstfeld Film's four-part series Germans in America (2006).