PROFESSOR, REVEREND KARL THEODOR CHRISTIAN FOLLEN, CALLED IN AMERICA “CHARLES FOLLEN” I’m not sure I’ve gotten this one right. During his early life in Europe, the student Karl Follen had been up close and familiar with a group radical enough to sponsor a book-burning, and on intimate terms with a couple of other students who transformed themselves into political assassins (assassins of the knife type). Here in the New World, he became a professor and then a reverend, and a story grew up around him that cast him as an abolitionist martyr — although there does not seem objectively to be a single thing about his life trajectory that would smack of the personal sacrifice made by a genuine martyr. Meanwhile there is the unexplored fact that after he had succumbed in a tragic transportation accident, there was a great deal of unexplained difficulty in obtaining a Boston venue for a memorial service. Why was it that that memorial could not simply have been staged at this octagonal church that he had himself designed in East Lexington? –It seems to me that something has been deliberately left out of this historical record. So, what the hell are we missing here? “NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Charles Follen HDT WHAT? INDEX CHARLES FOLLEN PROFESSOR REVEREND KARL CHARLES FOLLEN 1796 September 6, Tuesday: Karl Theodor Christian Friedrich Follen was born at the small Hessian town of Romrod, in Hesse-Darmstadt, Germany, to Christoph Follen (1759-1833), a counselor-at-law and judge in Gießen, and Rosine Follen (1766-1799), who had retired to Romrod to avoid the French revolutionary troops that had occupied Gießen. He would have as brothers August Ludwig Follen and Paul Follen, and as an uncle Karl Vogt. He would be educated at the preparatory school at Gießen, where he would distinguish himself by his proficiency in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, French, and Italian. French troops reached Cismona, having covered 100 kilometers in two days. NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT Charles Follen “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX PROFESSOR REVEREND KARL CHARLES FOLLEN CHARLES FOLLEN 1813 In about this year, at the age of 17, Karl Theodor Christian Friedrich Follen matriculated as a student of theology at the University of Gießen. In Stockholm, with the support of the French general who had in 1810 been elected Crown Prince of Sweden, Pehr Ling established a Royal Central Institute of Gymnastics. “Swedish gymnastics” would become a required part of the education of Swedish military officers, and in 1836 Ling, a noted fencer, would create for the Swedish Army a manual of bayonet-fighting. LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Charles Follen HDT WHAT? INDEX PROFESSOR REVEREND KARL CHARLES FOLLEN CHARLES FOLLEN 1814 The brothers Karl Theodor Christian Friedrich Follen and August Ludwig Follen enlisted in a unit of Hessian volunteers, to fight in the Napoleonic Wars. A few weeks later, however, Karl came down with typhoid fever. For a time it would be feared that this infection had destroyed his memory. Recovering, he returned to the University of Gießen, and took up the study of law. As a student, he would join the Gießen Burschenschaft and pledge to support republican ideals. THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Charles Follen HDT WHAT? INDEX PROFESSOR REVEREND KARL CHARLES FOLLEN CHARLES FOLLEN 1817 Edward Everett was the first American to receive the PhD of a German university. This was Göttingen, at which Alexander von Humboldt had studied. Karl Theodor Christian Friedrich Follen was a primary organizer of the 1st Wartburgfest at the Schloss Wartburg near Eisenach, Germany. He did not himself attend the student festival, but was the author of political essays, poems, and patriotic songs espousing violence –up to and including tyrannicide– for the preservation of our freedoms. THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Charles Follen HDT WHAT? INDEX PROFESSOR REVEREND KARL CHARLES FOLLEN CHARLES FOLLEN HDT WHAT? INDEX PROFESSOR REVEREND KARL CHARLES FOLLEN CHARLES FOLLEN October 18, Saturday: This year was the 300th since the nailing of the 95 theses to the door of the Roman Catholic edifice in Wittenberg, Schloßkirche: German republican students converged on the Schloss Wartburg near Eisenach, Germany in which Martin Luther had sought refuge while translating the Bible into the German language. HDT WHAT? INDEX PROFESSOR REVEREND KARL CHARLES FOLLEN CHARLES FOLLEN Inside that castle was preserved the authentic whale vertebra that Luther had used as a footstool! What this Wartburg Festival in Jena to commemorate the anniversaries of Luther’s death and the Battle of Leipzig demonstrated was the revolutionary sentiments of these German students. Here were 400 students from a dozen universities listening to impassioned political speeches and swearing deep oaths. They lighted an enormous bonfire into which they cast various symbolic objects. This castle had since become a symbol of German nationalism, associated with the black-red-gold color scheme of the uniforms of the Königlich Preußisches Freikorps von Lützow — that would eventually be adopted as the flag of a unified Germany. At the castle on this day, the students assembled around a cheery bonfire of all the reactionary books they could easily get their hands upon, such as August Freidrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue’s GESCHICHTE DES DEUTSCHEN REICHES VON DESSEN URSPRUNGE BIS ZU DESSEN UNTERGANGE (a gesture that in a later timeframe would come to be considered more problematic than it had seemed for that event :-). They pitched symbols of everything they hated into this bonfire, such as the Police Statute Book of the notorious Prussian Minister of Justice, Herr von Kamptz, the Code Napoleon, and especially the final act of the Congress of Vienna. Etienne-Nicolas Méhul died of tuberculosis in Paris, aged 54 years. La clochette, ou Le diable page, an opéra féerie by Louis Joseph Ferdinand Hérold to words of Théaulon de Lambert, was performed for the initial time, at the Théâtre Feydeau, Paris. HDT WHAT? INDEX PROFESSOR REVEREND KARL CHARLES FOLLEN CHARLES FOLLEN HDT WHAT? INDEX PROFESSOR REVEREND KARL CHARLES FOLLEN CHARLES FOLLEN HDT WHAT? INDEX PROFESSOR REVEREND KARL CHARLES FOLLEN CHARLES FOLLEN 1818 Karl Theodor Christian Friedrich Follen became a lecturer (Privatdocent of civil law) at the University of Gießen. DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD. Charles Follen “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX PROFESSOR REVEREND KARL CHARLES FOLLEN CHARLES FOLLEN 1819 March 23, Tuesday: Karl Ludwig Sand, a Bavarian theology student at the University of Jena, gained entry to the home of the reactionary diplomat and dramatist August Freidrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue, author of the GESCHICHTE DES DEUTSCHEN REICHES VON DESSEN URSPRUNGE BIS ZU DESSEN UNTERGANGE denouncing liberalism, civil liberties, and constitutions that had been thrown into the bonfire of the student bookburning at the Schloss Wartburg on October 18, 1817, and stabbed him repeatedly in the chest while the man’s 4-year- old son watched from the nearby nursery room (after several failed attempts to commit suicide by stabbing himself, Sand would be beheaded). HEADCHOPPING Karl Theodor Christian Friedrich Follen’s friendship with Sand would bring him under suspicion as an accomplice. Follen was able to destroy some letters linking him with Sand and would be acquitted due to lack of evidence. He would, however, be dismissed from the University of Gießen and would need to relocate, to Paris. There he would meet Charles Comte, son-in-law of Jean Baptiste Say and founder of the Censeur, a publication which he defended until he chose exile in Switzerland instead of imprisonment in France. WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF Charles Follen “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX PROFESSOR REVEREND KARL CHARLES FOLLEN CHARLES FOLLEN 1820 June 7, Wednesday: Louis Pierre Louvel was guillotined for the assassination of Charles Ferdinand d’Artois, Duc de Berry. HEADCHOPPING Karl Theodor Christian Friedrich Follen had come under suspicion as an accomplice, and would flee to Switzerland (he would teach for awhile at the cantonal school at Coire and at the University of Basel while Prussian authorities continued to solicit Swiss authorities to deliver him unto their tender mercies, until both he and Charles Comte would be forced again to flee, in Follen’s case to the United States of America). CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT Charles Follen “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX PROFESSOR REVEREND KARL CHARLES FOLLEN CHARLES FOLLEN 1824 Karl Theodor Christian Friedrich Follen’s brother August Adolf Ludwig Follen (1794-1855) had been leading radical student political groups at Giessen and Heidelberg, and after having been imprisoned at Berlin for agitation (1819-1821) had taught in Aarau, Switzerland (1821-1827) and become a member of the Grand Council at Zürich. His politically active brother’s works included the song Freye Stimmen frischer Jugend (1819), the novel MALAGYS UND VIVIAN (1829), the poem Harfen-Grüsse aus Deutschland und der Schweiz (1823), and the epic poem Tristans Eltern (1857). Karl, when the assassination of Kotzebue placed him and his friend Karl Sand under suspicion in the Holy Alliance of Austria, Prussia, and Russia, had been twice arrested and tried for conspiracy in that murder. He had fled first to France and then to the canton of Basel in Switzerland, and from there during this year he continued on to New-York, where he chose to be known as Charles Follen.