At the time when Heine was jeering in _Atta Troll_ at those who in their philanthropic and political ardour imagined strength of character to be a sufficient substitute for talent, a serious literary war was being waged in Germany over the question whether the poet ought to be a party-man or to take up a position superior to all parties. _Atta Troll_, which pours such ridicule on Freiligrath's youthful poems, appeared in the autumn of 1841; in November of the same year Freiligrath, who till then had been best known by oriental poems in Victor Hugo's style, and who had a short time previously accepted a pension from the King of Prussia, wrote, in a poem entitled _Año Spanien_ (on Diego Leon, the Spanish general shot in 1841) the following lines on the poet as such: "Er beugt sein Knie dem Helden Bonaparte, Und hört mit Zürnen d'Enghien's Todesschrei: Der Dichter steht auf einer höhern Warte Als auf den Zinnen der Partei."[1] This sentiment was condemned by Georg Herwegh in the poem _Die Partei (an Ferdinand Freiligrath_), the most striking lines of which are: "Partei! Partei! wer sollte sie nicht nehmen, Die noch die Mutter aller Siege war! Wie mag ein Dichter solch ein Wort verfehmen, Ein Wort, das alles Herrliche gebar! Nur offen wie ein Mann: Für oder wider? Und die Parole: Sklave oder frei? Selbst Götter stiegen vom Olymp hernieder Und kämpften auf den Zinnen der Partei."[2] A year later, in his poem _Duett der Pensionirten_, Herwegh taunted Freiligrath with accepting a pension from the King of Prussia, whereupon Freiligrath, as is well known, threw up his pension, joined the ranks of the political poets, and developed so rapidly into a Radical and revolutionary, that at the time of the outbreak in 1848, he was looked upon as the representative revolutionary poet in Germany. It is plain, then, that Freiligrath considered Herwegh to be in the right. Still this does not prove him to have been so. The question whether and to what extent the poet ought to be a party-man is a very complex one. It is so in the first instance because of the ambiguity of the word party, a word which Heine and Börne, Freiligrath and Herwegh employed with a different meaning at different times.