The brave man, indeed, calls himself lord of the land, through his iron, through his blood.

In 1787 the family moved to the neighbourhood of Stralsund where Arndt was able to attend the academy. In this year he publiErnst Moritz Arndtd the first part of his Geist der Zeit in which he flung down the gauntlet to Napoleon and called on countrymen to rise and shake off the French yoke. Poems and songs
Arndt's lyric poems are not all confined to politics.

After the Carlsbad Decrees the forces of the restoration counted him as a demagogue and he was only rehabilitated in 1840. Long after his death his anti-French war propaganda was used again by nationalists in both World Wars and also by the National Front of the GDR 1949-1989. Early in his life he fought for the abolition of serfdom later against Napoleonic dominance over Germany and had to flee to Sweden for some time due to his anti-French positions.