Charles Follen

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Frontispiece of 1841 edition of Collected Works

Charles Follen (September 6, 1796 – January 13, 1840) was a German poet and patriot, who later moved to the United States and became the first professor of German at Harvard University, a Unitarian minister, and a radical abolitionist.

[edit] Life in Europe

He was born Karl Theodor Christian Friedrich Follen at Romrod, in Hesse-Darmstadt, Germany, to Christoph Follen (1759-1833) and Rosine Follen (1766-1799). His father was a counselor-at-law and judge in Gießen, in Hesse-Darmstadt. His mother had retired to Romrod to avoid the French revolutionary troops that had occupied Gießen. He was the brother of August Ludwig Follen and Paul Follen, and the uncle of the biologist Karl Vogt.

Follen studied theology at the University of Gießen. In 1814 he and his brother, August Ludwig Follen, fought in the Napoleonic Wars as Hessian volunteers. After returning from the campaign he began studying law, and in 1818 established himself as Privatdocent of civil law at Gießen.

As a student, Follen joined a radical fraternity, and wrote political essays, poems, and patriotic songs. His essays and speeches advocated violence and tyrannicide in defense of freedom; this, and his friendship with Karl Ludwig Sand brought him under suspicion as an accomplice in Sand's 1819 assassination of the conservative diplomat and dramatist August von Kotzebue. Follen destroyed letters linking him with Sand and fled to France. He came under suspicion again after the political assassination of Charles Ferdinand, duc de Berry in 1820, and fled from France to Switzerland.

In Switzerland, he taught for a while at the cantonal school at Coire and at the University of Basel. However, the Prussian authorities continued to demand his surrender, and in 1824 he left Switzerland for the United States of America.

[edit] Life in the United States

Arriving at New York in 1824, Follen anglicized his name to "Charles" and, aided by letters of introduction from the Marquis de Lafayette, established himself in Massachusetts society. He became headmaster of the Round Hill School in Northampton, Massachusetts, and married Eliza Lee Cabot — the daughter of one Boston's most prominent families — in 1828. He joined the faculty of Harvard University in 1829 as an instructor and then a Professor in German. He became friendly with the New England Transcendentalists, and helped introduce them to German Romantic thought.

The Follens had a house built on the corner of Follen Street in Cambridge. Their family Christmas tree attracted the attention of the English writer Harriet Martineau during her long visit to the United States, and the Follens have been claimed by some as the first to introduce the German custom of decorated Christmas tree to the United States. (The claim is only one of many competing claims for the introduction of the custom to the United States.) His brother Paul Follen emigrated in 1834 to the United States, settling in Missouri.

In 1835, Charles Follen lost his professorship at Harvard due to his abolitionist agitation and his conflict with University President Josiah Quincy's strict disciplinary measures for undergraduates. His friendship with the prominent Unitarian preacher William Ellery Channing drew him into the Unitarian Church, and he was ordained as a minister in 1836. He had been called to the pulpit of the Second Congregational Society in Lexington, Massachusetts (now Follen Church Society-Unitarian Universalist) in 1835, but the community was unable to pay him sufficiently to support his family. Follen took other employment; Ralph Waldo Emerson supplied the pulpit from 1836-1838 at the small church. In 1838 Follen became the minister for his own congregation in New York City, now All Souls, but lost the position within the year due to conflicts over his radical anti-slavery views. He considered returning to Germany, but returned in 1839 to the congregation in East Lexington, Massachusetts. He had designed its unique octagonal building, for which ground was broken on July 4, 1839. Follen's octagonal building is still standing, and is the oldest church structure in Lexington. In his prayer at the groundbreaking for the building, Follen declared the mission of his church:

[May] this church never be desecrated by intolerance, or bigotry, or party spirit; more especially its doors might never be closed against any one, who would plead in it the cause of oppressed humanity; within its walls all unjust and cruel distinctions might cease, and [there] all men might meet as brethren.

Follen broke off a lecture tour in New York and took a steamboat (ironically named the Lexington) to Boston for the dedication of his new church. Follen died en route when his steamer caught fire and sank in a storm in the Long Island Sound. Due to his controversial positions, Channing was unable to find any church in Boston willing to hold a memorial service on his behalf. Rev. Samuel J. May was finally able to hold a memorial service for Charles Follen in March 1840 at the Marlborough Chapel.

In 1841, Follen's widow Eliza published a five-volume collection of his papers and a biography.