Herwegh, Georg (Stuttgart, 1817-75, Baden-Baden), was in 1835 a pupil at the Tübinger Stift, which he left in the following year to take up journalism, writing for the periodical Europa (see Lewald, A.). In 1839 he was in danger of being court-martialled for insubordination during his military service and deserted to Switzerland. In Zurich he published the revolutionary poetry of Gedichte eines Lebendigen (1841), which promptly established his reputation as the prophet of a new age. This collection contained the poem ‘Die Partei’ directed against Freiligrath (see Partei, Partei, wer sollte sie nicht nehmen). A second volume of Gedichte eines Lebendigen followed in 1843. On a tour of Germany in 1842 he was lionized and received in audience by King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia, whom he afterwards offended by a tactless letter. Expelled from Prussia, he found himself unwelcome in Switzerland, and moved in 1844 to Paris. A periodical, Deutscher Bote aus der Schweiz, planned at the height of his popularity and dedicated to the cause of democracy, was likewise doomed, and he published the contributions which he had already received in Einundzwanzig Bogen aus der Schweiz (1843). In 1848 he led an invasion of Baden by a revolutionary column, an enterprise which was quickly disposed of by regular troops (see Revolutionen 1848-9). The opinion that Herwegh's personal conduct in this episode left much to be desired was not confined to his detractors; and in consequence his quickly won reputation collapsed. After his flight from Baden, Herwegh lived in Switzerland until 1866, publishing little, though in 1863 he composed for Lassalle's Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein the song ‘Mann der Arbeit, aufgewacht’. He spent his last years in a suburb of Baden-Baden. The poems of his later years were published posthumously (Neue Gedichte, 1877). As a young man he translated the works of Lamartine (12 vols., 1839-40); he contributed seven plays, including Coriolanus, King Lear, and Troilus and Cressida to the Shakespeare translation (1866-72) edited by F. von Bodenstedt.

Herwegh possessed a gift for vigorous denunciatory poetry, simple in form and unsubtle in thought. His opinions were straightforwardly socialistic and anti-clerical. Werke (3 vols.), ed. H. Tardel, appeared in 1909, and a selection, Gedichte und Prosa, ed. P. Hasubek, in 1975.

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