Editing Gottfried Kinkel (section)

==Revolutionary==
In 1848, with his wife and [[Carl Schurz]], he started a newspaper, the ''Bonner Zeitung'', mostly devoted to following revolutionary activities, but also providing the traditional material such as musical and theatrical reviews that people expected then from a full-service newspaper.

[[File:Gottfried Kinkel Escape.jpg|thumb|Drawing recreating Kinkel's escape from Spandau]]
Kinkel joined the armed rebellion in the [[Palatinate (region)|Palatinate]] in 1849, believing himself to be acting legally in obedience to the directives of the [[Frankfurt Parliament]].  In a battle he was wounded and arrested and later sentenced to life imprisonment.<ref name="bionote">Biographical note contained in the ''Collected works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Volume 11'' (International Publishers: New York, 1979) p. 708.</ref>  Although the authorities originally sentenced him to be incarcerated in a fortress where he would have been able to pursue some semblance of his professional activities, [[Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia]] found this sentence to be illegal since he was not sentenced to death and "graciously" commuted it to lifetime imprisonment in a reformatory where his head was shaved, and he had to wear prisoner's garb and spend his time spinning wool.  He was eventually transferred to [[Spandau Prison]] in Berlin, where his friend and former student Carl Schurz helped him escape the prison at Spandau and reach London, England in November 1850.<ref name="bionote" />