August Ludwig Follen
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August (or, as he afterwards called himself, Adolf) Ludwig Follen (January 21, 1794 - December 26, 1855), German poet, was born at Gießen, the son of a district judge.
He was born at Gießen, in Hesse-Darmstadt, Germany, to Christoph Follen (1759-1833) and Rosine Follen (1766-1799). His father was a counselor-at-law and judge. He was the brother of Charles Follen and Paul Follen, and the uncle of the biologist Karl Vogt.
In 1814 he and his brother, Charles Follen, fought in the Napoleonic Wars as Hessian volunteers. He studied theology at Gießen and law at Heidelberg, and after leaving the university edited the Elberfeld Allgemeine Zeitung. Suspected of being connected with some radical plots, he was imprisoned for two years in Berlin.
When released in 1821 he went to Switzerland, where he taught in the canton school at Aarau, farmed from 1847-1854 the estate of Liebenfels in Thurgau, and then retired to Bern, where he lived till his death.
Besides a number of minor poems he wrote Harfengrusse ales Deutschland und der Schweiz (1823) and Malegys und Vivian (1829), a knightly romance after the fashion of the romantic school. Of his many translations, mention may be made of the Homeric Hymns in collaboration with R Schwenck (1814), Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered (1818) and Siegfrieds Tod from the Nibelungenlied (1842); he also collected and translated Latin hymns and sacred poetry (1819).
In 1846 he published a brief collection of sonnets entitled An die gottlosen Nichtswuteriche. This was aimed at the liberal philosopher Arnold Ruge, and was the occasion of a literary duel between the two authors. Follen's posthumous poem Tristans Eltern (1857) may also be mentioned, but his best-known work is a collection of German poetry entitled Bildersaal deutscher Dichtung (1827).
His two brothers, Karl and Paul Follen, emigrated to the US.
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
