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S Charles Follen VITA Charles Follen Brief life of a vigorous reformer: 1796-1840 by thomas s. hansen tudent revolutionary, political refugee, gymnastics o≠ered (to use Theodore Parker’s words) a foil of “precise think- instructor, radical abolitionist clergyman: German-born ing” to the Transcendentalists’ own “freethinking.” Follen’s social Karl Follen was an unusual Harvard professor. He grew up place was assured by his marriage to Eliza Lee Cabot. In 1830, her duringS Napoleon’s occupation of the German states; that conflict family funded his professorship, and the Follens built a house on fired his generation’s ideal of a united fatherland liberated from the corner of the Cambridge street that now bears their name. foreign domination and domestic fragmentation. At the Univer- The family’s Christmas tree, charmingly described by the visiting sity of Giessen, where he studied law, he became a leader of a rad- English writer Harriet Martineau, gained Follen credit for intro- ical fraternity for which he wrote political essays and poems. ducing this German custom to the United States. Their regimen of self-discipline included gymnastics and patri- The mid 1830s were a tense period at Harvard. Because Follen otic songs—an agenda considered seditious by the authorities. opposed the strict disciplinary measures that President Josiah Follen’s radicalism culminated in his support of fellow student Quincy imposed on undergraduates, he and his wife were sus- Carl Ludwig Sand, who in 1819 murdered the Russophile diplomat pected of fomenting student unrest. Although Follen claimed he and dramatist August von Kotzebue, who had publicly ridiculed was dismissed in 1835 for his growing abolitionist views, Quincy’s the students’ ideas. Follen destroyed letters that linked him to antipathy was probably an equal factor. (German continued to be Sand, but his notorious commitment to violence in the name of taught at Harvard, but not until 1872 did the University create an- freedom caused the historian Heinrich von Treitschke to label him other professorship in the field.) “the German Robespierre.” He escaped to Switzerland, but, fear- The Unitarian church gave direction to Follen’s life after Har- ing extradition, fled to New York in 1824. The Marquis de Lafayette vard. The secular Lutheran was drawn to Boston’s liberal Unitar- aided him with introductions to prominent Americans. ian circles through his friendship with the movement’s controver- The 28-year-old refugee anglicized his name to Charles and be- sial local leader, another Harvardian, William Ellery Channing. gan a new career at the Round Hill School in Northampton, Mas- Follen was ordained at Channing’s urging, and took a pulpit in sachusetts, brainchild of Göttingen-trained Harvard classmates New York City in 1838, only to be dropped within the year after George Bancroft and Joseph Cogswell. The curriculum, modeled on alienating the congregation with his extreme abolitionism. the classical German Gymnasium, included German and gymnastics. Dejected by this loss, Follen thought of returning to Germany. In Meanwhile, works by Thomas Carlyle, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1839, however, he was hired by a Lexington, Massachusetts, con- and Madame de Staël had sparked American curiosity about gregation. That winter he broke o≠ a lecture tour in New York to Goethe and German philosophy and theology. Soon Follen was of- return for the dedication of his new parish church. His steamboat fered a job by Harvard’s young professor of modern languages, sank in a storm, and Channing could not find one Boston church George Ticknor. German lessons had been available privately to willing to hold a memorial service for a man who was marginalized Harvard students, but Follen’s course was genuine pioneer work. socially and financially for his fierce abolitionist rhetoric. Andrew Peabody, A.B. 1826, described that first class: “There In 1837 Follen remarked to his wife, “Had I been willing to lower were no German books in the bookstore….The German Reader for Be- my standard of right, the world would have been with me, and I ginners, compiled by our teacher, was furnished to the class in single might have obtained its favor.” Instead he lived by the lines he sent sheets as it was needed, and was printed in Roman type, there to Harriet Martineau: “Those principles in which we live and being no German type in easy reach. There could not have been a move and have our being, though as old as the creation of man, are happier introduction to German literature….” The Reader and still a new doctrine, the elements of a new covenant, even in civi- Follen’s 1828 German Grammar launched the systematic teaching of lized, republican, Christian America. They are as the bread and German in the United States. Their enthusiastic and engaging au- wine of the altar, to which all are invited, but which few partake, thor was also charged with setting up the first gymnastics pro- because they dread to sign in their own hearts the pledge of truth gram at the College; elaborate apparatus was constructed on the which may have to be redeemed by martyrdom.” Delta, the triangular plot where Memorial Hall now stands. For Boston’s Germanophile Transcendentalists, Follen became Thomas S. Hansen, Ph.D. ’77, is professor of German at Wellesley College. a mediator of the exciting new world of German thought, some- one who could discuss with Bronson Alcott, for example, the edu- Opposite: The 1841 portrait engraving of Follen appeared as the frontispiece cational theories of Johann Pestalozzi. His systematic approach of Eliza Follen’s edition of her husband’s works. 38 September - October 2002 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For copyright and reprint information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746. Photomontage by Bartek Malysa. Portrait courtesy of the Harvard University Archives. Book from the collection of historical tex the Special Collections, Monroe C. Gutman Library, Harvard Graduate School of Education. Gymnastics engravings from tbooks in Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For copyright and reprint information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746. die Söhne des Vaterlandes (1817), by J.C.F. Gutsmuth, courtesy of the Harvard College Library. Turnbuch für.
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