# Men of the Time, eleventh edition/Blind, Karl

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​BLIND, Karl, was born at Mannheim, Sept. 4, 1826. He studied jurisprudence at Heidelberg and Bonn; as well as philosophy, political economy, history, archæology, and ancient Germanic literature. At both universities he was active ​for German freedom and union. He was tried under the Press-law at Mannheim, in 1846, but acquitted by the High Court of Justice. He established associations among the students, the artisans, the Gymnastic Unions, and the Army, preparatory to the Revolution. In 1847 he was imprisoned in Rhenish Bavaria for high treason against King Ludwig. The trial was stopped, however, owing to the expected difficulty of obtaining a verdict of guilty from a jury of the Palatinate. Another impending trial was quashed by the movement of 1848. At the beginning of the German revolution, he took a leading part in the preparations for the rising at Karlsruhe, when the demands for the liberty of the Press, the universal introduction of the jury system, the establishment of a National Guard and of a German Parliament were carried. Again he was arrested for high treason, as endeavouring to expand the movement into one for a German Commonwealth, but was freed by the popular successes at Offenburg. During the Frankfort "Vor-Parliament," as a speaker at mass-meetings, he insisted on the abolition of the princely Diet and the election of a Provisional Executive. He was wounded during street-riots at Frankfort, and proscribed after his participation in the rising led by Hecker. From Alsace, where he stood at the head of the Strasburg Committee, he agitated for a new levy. Falsely accused of being implicated in the Paris Insurrection of June, he was imprisoned at Strasburg, and transported in chains to Switzerland, the mayor of St. Louis generously preventing his surrender to the Baden authorities, which had been planned by the French police. During the first Schleswig-Holstein war, after the armistice of Malmoe, which offended the national sentiment, he, with Gustav von Struve, led, in Sept. 1848, the second Republican Revolution in the Black Forest. At the storming of Staufen he fought on the barricade, being among the last who left the town. He was made a prisoner through the treachery of some militiamen, and court-martialled. His life, however, was saved, owing to a defect in the proclamation of martial law, and the sympathies of two of the soldiers composing the Court. He was kept in the casemates at Rastatt, at first in chains, and condemned, seven months afterwards, at a State trial, lasting ten days, by a half-sympathising jury, to eight years' imprisonment; the Crown Prosecutor having asked for the penalty of death by the "sword." In the spring of 1849, when being secretly transported to the fortress of Mainz, he was liberated by the people and the soldiers breaking open the prison at Bruchsal. Heading the same day a hastily formed number of free corps, he first endeavoured, with Struve, to take Rastatt, and then entered the capital of Baden. He was a firm opponent of Brentano, the chief of the new Government, whom he accused of being in occult connection with the ejected dynasty—a fact afterwards proved, when Brentano was declared a "traitor" by the Constituent Assembly. Being sent on a diplomatic mission, with Frederick Schütz, to Paris, accredited to Louis Napoleon, the then President of the Republic, Karl Blind was arrested, contrary to the law of nations, on a charge of being implicated in Ledru Rollin's rising for the protection of the Roman Republic. The Left of the French Assembly demanded his deliverance. Threatened, after several months of imprisonment, with being handed over, if he continued to maintain his diplomatic quality, to the Prussian courts-martial, which in the meanwhile had carried out numerous executions of military and political leaders, he refused to yield. Finally, he was banished from France. After this he lived in Belgium, with ​his wife, who has made many sacrifices for the popular cause and also undergone imprisonment. New persecutions induced him to come with his family to England: Louis Napoleon refusing to let him pass through France into Italy. He has carried on, from here, a Democratic and National German Propaganda. After an amnesty, in 1862, the House of Deputies at Stuttgart gave him a banquet. He was the speaker of the London Germans at Garibaldi's entry. He promoted the Schleswig-Holstein movement in connection with leaders of the Schleswig Diet, whose confidential communications he transmitted to the English Foreign Office, and was at the head of the London Committee during the war of 1863–64. He likewise exerted himself to influence public opinion in favour of German freedom and union, of Italian and Polish independence, and of the American Union, by speeches and pamphlets in England and Scotland. At Berlin, his stepson met with a tragic death in the attempt of May 7, 1866. During the war of 1870–71, Karl Blind supported his country's cause. Many political writings, and essays on history, mythology, and Germanic literature, published in Germany, England, America, and Spain, have proceeded from his pen. He has exerted himself to bring about the National Testimonial for the philosopher Feuerbach, and has worked abroad for a proper commemoration of the great master-singer Hans Sachs. In 1875, an assault, well-nigh endangering his life, was made upon him in the streets of London by an over-excited political adversary, who, found guilty and fined before a police-court, was expelled from the "German Athenæum." Among Karl Blind's recent writings are:—Biographies of Ledru Rollin, Francis Deak, and Freiligrath; "Fire-Burial among our Germanic Forefathers: a Record of the Poetry and History of Teutonic Cremation;" "Yggdrasil; or, the Teutonic Tree of Existence;" "An Old German Poem and a Vedic Hymn;" "Scottish, Shetlandic, and Germanic Water-Tales;" "New Finds in Shetlandic and Welsh Folk-lore;" "The Siegfried Tale;" disquisitions on Khazar and Russian history, urging resistance to the further extension of the power of the Czar; and "The New Conflict in Germany."