ARNDT, ERNST MORITZ (1769-1860), German poet and patriot, was born on the 26th of December 1769 at Schoritz in the island of Rugen, which at that time belonged to Sweden. He was the son of a prosperous farmer, and emancipated serf of the lord of the district, Count Putbus; his mother came of well-to-do German yeoman stock. In 1787 the family removed into the neighbourhood of Stralsund, where Arndt was enabled to attend the academy. After an interval of private study he went in 1791 to the university of Greifswald as a student of theology and history, and in 1793 removed to Jena, where he fell under the influence of Fichte. On the completion of his university course he returned home, was for two years a private tutor in the family of Ludwig Kosegarten (1758-1818), pastor of Wittow and poet, and having qualified for the ministry as a "candidate of theology," assisted in the church services. At the age of twenty-eight he renounced the ministry, and for eighteen months he led a wandering life, visiting Austria, Hungary, Italy, France and Belgium. Returning homewards up the Rhine, he was moved by the sight of the ruined castles along its banks to intense bitterness against France. The impressions of this journey he later described in _Reisen durch einen Theil Teutschlands, Ungarns, Italiens und Frankreichs in den Jahren 1798 und 1799_ (1802-1804). In 1800 he settled in Greifswald as _privat-docent_ in history, and the same year published _Uber die Freiheit der alien Republiken_. In 1803 appeared _Germanien und Europa_," a fragmentary ebullition," as be himself called it, of his views on the French aggression. This was followed by one of the most remarkable of his books, _Versuch einer Geschichte der Leibeigenschaft in Pommern und Rugen_ (Berlin, 1803), a history of serfdom in Pomerania and Rugen, which was so convincing an indictment that King Gustavus Adolphus IV. in 1806 abolished the evil. Arndt had meanwhile risen from _privat-docent_ to extraordinary professor, and in 1806 was appointed to the chair of history at the university. In this year he published the first part of his _Geist der Zeit_, in which he flung down the gauntlet to Napoleon and called on his countrymen to rise and shake off the French yoke. So great was the excitement it produced that Arndt was compelled to take refuge in Sweden to escape the vengeance of Napoleon. Settling in Stockholm, he obtained government employment, but devoted himself to the great cause which was nearest his heart, and in pamphlets, poems and songs communicated his enthusiasm to his countrymen. Schill's heroic death at Stralsund impelled him to return to Germany and, under the disguise of "Almann, teacher of languages," he reached Berlin in December 1809. In 1810 he returned to Greifswald, but only for a few months. He again set out on his adventurous travels, lived in close contact with the first men of his time, such as Blucher, Gneisenau and Stein, and in 1812 was summoned by the last named to St