Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Blind, Karl
BLIND, KARL (1826–1907), political refugee and author, was born of middle-class parents in Mannheim, in the grand duchy of Baden, Germany, on 4 Sept. 1826. Educated at the Lyceum, Mannheim, and then at Karlsruhe, where he won gold and silver medals, he proceeded in 1845 with a scholarship to Heidelberg University, and there studied jurisprudence, literature, archaeology, and philosophy. At Mannheim, the centre of the German radical movement, he had imbibed revolutionary principles, attaching himself to the extreme party which aimed at a united Germany under a republican government. At Heidelberg he actively engaged in political agitation, helping to form democratic "clubs among undergraduates, soldiers, and citizens, and contributing to the advanced nationalist press of Baden, Bavaria, and Prussia. For writing an article in 1846 in which he hotly denounced the punishment of a freethinking soldier, Blind was arrested on a charge of treason. He was acquitted on trial through the eloquence of his advocate, Friedrich Hecker, leader of the advanced liberal group in the Baden Reichstag, but he was dismissed from Heidelberg University shortly afterwards, and lost his scholarship. He continued his studies at Bonn, and pursued his violent propaganda there. He repeatedly revisited Heidelberg in disguise to take part in political meetings of the students. For the secret distribution at Dürkheim, near Neustadt, in 1847 of a treasonable pamphlet entitled 'Deutscher Hunger und Deutsche Fürsten' he was arrested for the third time, and with the lady who became his wife was condemned to imprisonment.
In March 1848 the year of revolution throughout Europe Blind took part in the democratic risings in Karlsruhe and other towns in Baden. He was present at Frankfort during the meetings of the Vorparlament, the gathering of advanced liberals, and with Hecker, Gustav von Struve, and other leaders of the republican party, agitated for the body's continuance as a permanent national assembly. He was wounded slightly in a street riot in a conflict with the police, and in April joined Hecker in the republican rising near Lake Constance. Proscribed by the Baden government, he took refuge in Alsace, but was there accused of complicity in the June rising in Paris. Imprisoned at Strassburg by order of General Cavaignac, who was trying to repress the revolutionary movement in France, he was taken in chains to the Swiss frontier. Re-entering Baden, he was prominent in the rising under Struve at Staufen (24 Sept. 1848), and was with Struve taken prisoner at Wehr by some members of the 'city guard' soon afterwards. Sentenced to eight years' imprisonment, he was placed in the underground case- mates at Rostatt, and ultimately, in May 1849, removed to Bruchsal. The revolutionary movement spread thither, and Blind was released by a party of armed citizens. The revolutionists soon established at Offenburg under Brentano, on 1 June 1849, a provisional government for Baden and Rhenish Bavaria, and Blind was sent as its representative on a political mission to Paris. Implicated there in Ledru-Rollin's movement against Louis Napoleon, the president of the new French republic, he was arrested on 13 June, sentenced to perpetual exile from France, and, after arbitrary imprisonment for two months in La Force, was conducted to the Belgian frontier. He was there joined by his wife and children. In 1852 he was in turn exiled from Belgium, owing to pressure from Louis Napoleon's government, and coming to England, settled with his family at Hampstead.
Blind, though never naturalised, thenceforth made England his permanent home, and for more than half a century devoted himself without intermission to literary support of 'nationalism' and democratic progress in Germany and elsewhere. His house at Hampstead became a rendezvous for political refugees from Europe, and filled a prominent place in the history of all advanced political movements. He welcomed to England Mazzini, who became an intimate friend, and whom he introduced to Swinburne. At Garibaldi's reception in London in 1864 he spoke on behalf of the German community. He entertained Ledru-Rollin, Louis Blanc, Karl Marx, Kinkel, and Freiligrath. It was his especial aim to enlist and educate English public opinion on behalf of the German revolutionary cause. In 1863-4, as head of a London committee to promote the independence of Schleswig-Holstein, he acted as intermediary between the leaders of the Schleswig Diet and the English foreign office. An ardent champion of Polish freedon, he was in communication with the revolutionary government at Warsaw during 1863, and in lectures which he delivered throughout England and Scotland denounced Russia's oppression of the Poles. His pen was active in support of the North during the American civil war, of Germany during the Franco-German war, 1870-1, of Greece in her various disputes with Turkey, and of Japan in her war with Russia in 1904. For his 'services to Greece he was decorated by King George of Greece with the order of St. Andrew. He also strenuously advocated the claims to independence of the Egyptian nationalists from 1882 onwards, and of the Transvaal Boers from 1878 till his death.
Apart from current politics, Blind wrote much on history and on German and Indian mythology, contributing to leading reviews in England, Germany, America, and Italy. Among his better known articles were biographical studies of Freiligrath, Ledru-Rollin, and the Hungarian statesman, Francis Deak, 'Zur Geschichte der republikanischen Partei in England' (Berlin, 1873), and 'Fire-Burial among our Germanic Forefathers' (1875), which were reprinted in pamphlet form. To his advocacy was due the foundation of a memorial to Feuerbach the philosopher at Landshut, and the erection of monuments to Hans Sachs, the cobbler bard of Nuremberg, and to Walther von der Vogelweide at Bozen in 1877.
Blind died at Hampstead on 31 May 1907, and was cremated at Golder's Green. He married about 1849 Friederike Ettlinger, the widow of a merchant named Cohen, by whom he had one son, Rudolf Blind, an artist, and one daughter. Mathilde Blind [q. v. Suppl. I] was his step-daughter; Ferdinand Cohen Blind, who attempted Bismarck's life in Unter den Linden on 7 May 1866, and then committed suicide in prison, was his step-son.
A bust of Karl Blind is in the possession of his daughter, Mrs. Ottilie Hancock.
[The Times, 1 June 1907; Illustrierte Zeitung, 6 Sept. 1906 (with portrait); Vapereau, Dictionnaire des Contemporains; Men and Women of the Time, 1899; Eugene Oswald, Reminiscences of a Busy Life, 1911; Hans Blum, Die Deutsche Revolution; Brockhaus, Conversations-Lexicon; autobiographical articles on the years 1848-9 by Blind in the Cornhill Magazine, 1898-9.]