Gottfried Kinkel (1815–1882)

Early Life & Academic Career

Kinkel studied theology at the University of Bonn and the University of Berlin, establishing himself as a Privatdozent (theology tutor) at Bonn in 1836. He briefly served as assistant preacher in Cologne. After a journey to Italy in 1837 shifted his interests, he abandoned theology for the history of art. In 1846 he was appointed extraordinary professor of the history of art at the University of Bonn.

In 1843 he married Johanna Mockel (1810–1858), a composer, writer, musician, and revolutionary in her own right. They had four children together.

Revolutionary Activities (1848–1849)

The Revolutions of 1848 drew Kinkel into radical politics. With his wife Johanna and his student Carl Schurz, he founded the Bonner Zeitung, a newspaper devoted to revolutionary activities alongside the usual musical and theatrical reviews.

In 1849 Kinkel joined the armed rebellion in the Palatinate, believing he was acting legally under directives of the Frankfurt Parliament. He was wounded in battle, arrested, and sentenced to life imprisonment. King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia personally intervened to worsen his sentence — commuting a fortress detention (which would have allowed some professional activity) to imprisonment in a reformatory where Kinkel’s head was shaved and he was forced to spin wool in prisoner’s garb. He was eventually transferred to Spandau Prison in Berlin.

Escape from Spandau (1850)

In November 1850, Kinkel’s friend and former student Carl Schurz — who had himself escaped the revolutionary defeat at Rastatt — returned secretly to Prussia and engineered Kinkel’s escape from Spandau. They fled first to Edinburgh, Scotland, and then to London. The dramatic prison break became one of the most famous episodes of the 1848 revolutionary aftermath. Schurz later went on to become a U.S. Senator, Union Army general, and Secretary of the Interior.

Dickens and the Kinkel Affair

Charles Dickens had been leading a public agitation campaign in England for Kinkel’s release prior to the escape. On 4 December 1850, Dickens wrote from the office of Household Words:

Dickens further included Germany in a list of countries “where there are tyrants and oppressors… watchful to find freedom weak that they may strike, and backed by great armies” in his Household Words article “Whole Hogs” (23 August 1851). Though Dickens did not personally carry out the rescue, his public lobbying effort represented significant English sympathy for Kinkel’s cause.

Source: E. N. Gummer, “Dickens and Germany” (see companion file dickens.md in this directory).

Communist League & Conflict with Marx

In London, Kinkel joined the Communist League — the same organization for which Marx and Engels had written The Communist Manifesto in 1847–48.

However, Kinkel sided with the Willich–Schapper faction against Marx and Engels in the 1850 split within the League. The dispute centered on strategy: Willich and Schapper (and Kinkel) wanted to press ahead with immediate revolutionary action, while Marx and Engels argued for building a broader international workers’ movement based on theoretical foundations. The League formally dissolved in November 1852 after the Cologne Communist Trial.

Marx’s Satire: The Great Men of the Exile

Marx and Engels’s hostility toward Kinkel found its sharpest literary expression in Die großen Männer des Exils (“The Great Men of the Exile”), a satirical pamphlet written in 1852. In it, Marx and Engels mercilessly lampooned the German émigré leaders in London — Kinkel chief among them — as vain, self-important, and politically naive. Marx portrayed Kinkel as a sentimental poet playing at revolution, a man whose popularity among the exile community was wildly out of proportion to his actual political understanding or talent.

The biographical note in the Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels (Volume 11, International Publishers, 1979, p. 708) confirms that Kinkel “came out against Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in the split within the Communist League.”

The Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911) echoed a similar assessment of Kinkel in cultural terms: “Kinkel’s popularity was out of proportion to his talent,” characterizing his poetry as “of the sweetly sentimental type in vogue in Germany in the mid-19th century.”

Life in Exile

London (1850–1866)

Kinkel visited the United States to raise funds for a “German National Loan” intended to finance revolutionary activities in Germany. Though enthusiastically received — he even met President Millard Fillmore — he raised very little money.

Returning to London in 1853, he taught German and public speaking for women, and lectured on German literature, art, and the history of culture. In 1858, he founded the German-language newspaper Hermann. In 1860, he married Minna Emilia Ida Werner of Königsberg. In 1863, he was appointed examiner at the University of London and other English schools.

Switzerland (1866–1882)

In 1866 Kinkel accepted a professorship of archaeology and the history of art at the Polytechnikum (ETH) in Zürich. He was never able to return to Germany. He died there on 13 November 1882 at the age of 67.

Death of Johanna Kinkel (1858)

Johanna Kinkel (née Mockel) was found dead in her London garden on 15 November 1858 after falling from a window. Suicide was suspected but could never be verified. She was 48 years old.

Johanna had been a formidable figure in her own right — a published composer, music pedagogue, political journalist (co-editing the Bonner Zeitung), novelist, and revolutionary. Her autobiographical novel Hans Ibeles in London was published posthumously in 1860. She directed the Maikäferbund, a literary circle in Bonn from 1840 to 1848. Carl Schurz, in his Reminiscences, devoted many pages to her, particularly regarding the years 1848–1852.

Her tombstone was inscribed: Freiheit, Liebe und Dichtung — “Freedom, Love, and Poetry.”

She is buried in Brookwood Cemetery, Surrey, alongside two of her daughters: Marie Kinkel (January–February 1861) and Johanna Kinkel (1845–1863).

Circumstances & Open Questions

The circumstances of Johanna’s death remain ambiguous. The American Cyclopædia (1879) notes she “lost her life” when she “fell or threw herself out of a window.” Whether this was accident, despair from the grinding hardships of exile, or something darker is unknown. Gottfried remarried less than two years later, in 1860.

Notable Works

Open Question: Relation to Ivan Kinkel (1883–1945)?

The ivan-kinkel/ directory in this archive contains research on Ivan Germanovich Kinkel (1883–1945), a Bulgarian economist of Russian origin who was born in Bryansk and became a professor at the University of Sofia.

Comparison

Assessment

No direct evidence of a family connection has been found, but several suggestive factors warrant further investigation:

1. Uncommon surname. “Kinkel” is not a common German or Russian surname. Its appearance in both German revolutionary and Russian intellectual contexts is notable.

2. Timing. Gottfried died in Zürich in November 1882. Ivan was born in Bryansk in January 1883 — one year later. Ivan’s father’s name was “German” (patronymic: Germanovich). Gottfried was German. If Ivan were a grandson or nephew, the Russification of the family and relocation to Bryansk would need to be explained.

3. Shared intellectual profile. Both were polymaths active across wide disciplinary ranges (art, politics, literature for Gottfried; economics, sociology, psychoanalysis, history for Ivan). Both engaged seriously with revolutionary movements. Both operated in the German intellectual orbit (Ivan studied in Berlin and Leipzig, received his doctorate from Leipzig in 1911).

4. Leipzig connection. Ivan studied at the University of Leipzig (1906–1908) and received his doctorate there in 1911. Gottfried had extensive German academic connections and his works were published in Leipzig-based series.

5. Missing link. The Nenovsky (2015) paper on Ivan Kinkel, the most comprehensive English-language survey of his life, makes no mention of Gottfried Kinkel. This is a significant silence — if there were a known family connection, an academic paper would likely have noted it, especially given Gottfried’s fame.

6. Different geographic origins. Gottfried’s family was from the Rhineland. Ivan’s family was in Bryansk (western Russia). The gap is large but not impossible — German-speaking families did settle across the Russian Empire, particularly in academic and professional classes.

Verdict: Unresolved. The surname coincidence is intriguing given its rarity, and Ivan’s German academic formation (Berlin, Leipzig, Zurich connections) parallels Gottfried’s world. But without genealogical evidence linking Gottfried’s descendants or extended family to Bryansk, no connection can be established. This remains an open question suitable for archival research in Bulgarian (National Archive fund 620/1/22, Mara Kinkel’s record) and German genealogical databases.

Downloaded Materials

See index-de-jonge-gottfried-kinkel.md for index.

Sources

• Alfred R. De Jonge, Gottfried Kinkel as Political and Social Thinker (AMS Press, 1966)
• Gottfried Kinkel — Wikipedia
• Johanna Kinkel — Wikipedia
• Carl Schurz — Wikipedia
• Communist League — Wikipedia
• Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Volume 11 (International Publishers, 1979), p. 708
• Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th edition (1911), “Kinkel, Johann Gottfried”
• Encyclopedia Americana (1920), “Kinkel, Gottfried”
• The American Cyclopædia (1879), “Kinkel, Johann Gottfried”
• E. N. Gummer, “Dickens and Germany” (see dickens.md)
• Nenovsky, Nikolay (2015), “Ivan Kinkel’s (1883–1945) Theory of Economic Development,” European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 22(2): 272–299 (see ../ivan-kinkel/nenovsky_Kinkel_EJHET_2015.md)
• Carl Schurz, Reminiscences (3 vols., New York: McClure, 1907)
• A. Strodtmann, Gottfried Kinkel (2 vols., Hamburg, 1851)
• Otto Henne am Rhyn, G. Kinkel, ein Lebensbild (Zürich, 1883)

Keywords: #Gottfried #Kinkel