Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 April 1878 — An Adventure of Carl Schurz. [ARTICLE]

An Adventure of Carl Schurz.

It was in Spandau that the adventure occurred which won Carl Schurz his knight’s spurs—if one may use a medieval figure in this unknightiy age. But the whole adventure is thoroughly romantic. Before the troubles of 1818, Schurz was studying medicine at Bonn, and there became intimate with the poet and professor Gottfried Kinkel. This Kinkel was a wild, visionary writer, but seems to have possessed that personal magnetism which secures truest and most self-sacrificing friends. Both he and Schurz took part in the so-called Baden revolution in 1849—a campaign which, so far as the revolutionists were concerned, resembled more closely a Fenian invasion of Canada than any other military event with which lam acquainted. At the break-up those patriots who were able crossed the frontier into France or Switzerland, Schurz reaching the latter country; but Kinkel was caught, and locked up in the penitentiary at Spandau, where he spent the most of his time in spinning yarn for the Government’s benefit. His friends, however, were not going to let him pine away at this useful but uncongenial employment without making an effort to release him from it. His wife —a woman of great energy of character—wrote to Schurz, asking if he were ready to help, and he came at once to Bonn to see her. From there he went with letters to some trustworthy persons in Berlin, notably to a certain physician there; and these two, with the assistance of a country gentleman living in the neighborhood of Spandau, arranged and carried out the daring attempt. They succeeded in bribing a turnkey, who, between 11 and 12 at night, having provided himself with the duplicate key to Kinkel’s cell which hung in the prison office, and a rope, let-the latter out, and got him on to the roof of the building, whence he was let down to the street, where Schurz and the physician were waiting. They conducted him with all possible haste to a neighboring inn, where a suit of plain clothes was awaiting him, the doctor taking in exchange his prison gear, which he intended, and, to his sorrow, actually did, preserve as a relic, though implored by his friends to destroy so dangerous a possession. For not long afterward, he being suspected of having a hand in Kinkel’s flight, his house was searched, and, the clothes being found, he was sentenced to a long term in prison, and died there. This, however, is a digression. After the change of dress was effected, the before-mentioned country gentleman appeared with a carriage and a span of fine horses, himself on the box, and, after Schurz and Kinkel had got in, started for the Mecklenburg boundary. They reached’ in safety the port of Rostock, being everywhere helped on by trustworthy friends, and from there the two sailed for Scotland in a vessel dispatched by its generous owner solely io convey them. Mr. Schurz was at this time (November, 1850) but 22 years old.— Arthur Vcnner, in Harper's Magazine for Moy.