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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.
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 Kinkel (1810–1858), a writer, composer and musician who assisted her husband in his literary work and revolutionary activities. They had four children. In 1846 he was appointed extraordinary professor of the history of art at the University of Bonn.
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. In a battle he was wounded and arrested and later sentenced to life imprisonment.Biographical note contained in the Collected works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Volume 11 (International Publishers: New York, 1979) p. 708. Although the authorities originally sentenced him to be incarcerated in a fortress where he would have been able to pursue some semblance of his professional activities, Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia found this sentence to be illegal since he was not sentenced to death and "graciously" commuted it to lifetime imprisonment in a reformatory where his head was shaved, and he had to wear prisoner's garb and spend his time spinning wool. He was eventually transferred to Spandau Prison in Berlin, where his friend and former student Carl Schurz helped him escape the prison at Spandau and reach London, England in November 1850.
Kinkel visited the United States to raise funds for a "German National Loan" that was to fund revolutionary activities in Germany. Although he was enthusiastically received, and met with 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 paper, Hermann. Johanna Kinkel lost her life in late 1858 when she fell or threw herself out of a window. In 1860, Kinkel married Minna Emilia Ida Werner, a Königsberger who was living in London. In 1863, he was appointed examiner at the University of London and other schools in England.
Kinkel's Gedichte first appeared in 1843, and went through several editions. His best works were the verse romances, Otto der Schütz, eine rheinische Geschichte in zwölf Abenteuern (1846), which by 1920 had gone through over 100 editions, and Der Grobschmied von Antwerpen (1868). 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).
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