Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/202

 scholarship to Heidelberg University, and there studied jurisprudence, literature, archaeology, and philosophy. At Mannheim, the centre of the German radical movement, he had imbibed revolutionary principles, attaching himself to the extreme party which aimed at a united Germany under a republican government. At Heidelberg he actively engaged in political agitation, helping to form democratic "clubs among undergraduates, soldiers, and citizens, and contributing to the advanced nationalist press of Baden, Bavaria, and Prussia. For writing an article in 1846 in which he hotly denounced the punishment of a freethinking soldier, Blind was arrested on a charge of treason. He was acquitted on trial through the eloquence of his advocate, Friedrich Hecker, leader of the advanced liberal group in the Baden Reichstag, but he was dismissed from Heidelberg University shortly afterwards, and lost his scholarship. He continued his studies at Bonn, and pursued his violent propaganda there. He repeatedly revisited Heidelberg in disguise to take part in political meetings of the students. For the secret distribution at Dürkheim, near Neustadt, in 1847 of a treasonable pamphlet entitled 'Deutscher Hunger und Deutsche Fürsten' he was arrested for the third time, and with the lady who became his wife was condemned to imprisonment.

In March 1848 the year of revolution throughout Europe Blind took part in the democratic risings in Karlsruhe and other towns in Baden. He was present at Frankfort during the meetings of the Vorparlament, the gathering of advanced liberals, and with Hecker, Gustav von Struve, and other leaders of the republican party, agitated for the body's continuance as a permanent national assembly. He was wounded slightly in a street riot in a conflict with the police, and in April joined Hecker in the republican rising near Lake Constance. Proscribed by the Baden government, he took refuge in Alsace, but was there accused of complicity in the June rising in Paris. Imprisoned at Strassburg by order of General Cavaignac, who was trying to repress the revolutionary movement in France, he was taken in chains to the Swiss frontier. Re-entering Baden, he was prominent in the rising under Struve at Staufen (24 Sept. 1848), and was with Struve taken prisoner at Wehr by some members of the 'city guard' soon afterwards. Sentenced to eight years' imprisonment, he was placed in the underground case- mates at Rostatt, and ultimately, in May 1849, removed to Bruchsal. The revolutionary movement spread thither, and Blind was released by a party of armed citizens. The revolutionists soon established at Offenburg under Brentano, on 1 June 1849, a provisional government for Baden and Rhenish Bavaria, and Blind was sent as its representative on a political mission to Paris. Implicated there in Ledru-Rollin's movement against Louis Napoleon, the president of the new French republic, he was arrested on 13 June, sentenced to perpetual exile from France, and, after arbitrary imprisonment for two months in La Force, was conducted to the Belgian frontier. He was there joined by his wife and children. In 1852 he was in turn exiled from Belgium, owing to pressure from Louis Napoleon's government, and coming to England, settled with his family at Hampstead.

Blind, though never naturalised, thenceforth made England his permanent home, and for more than half a century devoted himself without intermission to literary support of 'nationalism' and democratic progress in Germany and elsewhere. His house at Hampstead became a rendezvous for political refugees from Europe, and filled a prominent place in the history of all advanced political movements. He welcomed to England Mazzini, who became an intimate friend, and whom he introduced to Swinburne. At Garibaldi's reception in London in 1864 he spoke on behalf of the German community. He entertained Ledru-Rollin, Louis Blanc, Karl Marx, Kinkel, and Freiligrath. It was his especial aim to enlist and educate English public opinion on behalf of the German revolutionary cause. In 1863-4, as head of a London committee to promote the independence of Schleswig-Holstein, he acted as intermediary between the leaders of the Schleswig Diet and the English foreign office. An ardent champion of Polish freedon, he was in communication with the revolutionary government at Warsaw during 1863, and in lectures which he delivered throughout England and Scotland denounced Russia's oppression of the Poles. His pen was active in support of the North during the American civil war, of Germany during the Franco-German war, 1870-1, of Greece in her various disputes with Turkey, and of Japan in her war with Russia in 1904. For his 'services to Greece he was decorated by King George of Greece with