German politician and author, nephew of Friedrich Froebel who founded the kindergarten system; born at Griesheim, Germany, on the 16th of July 1805, and studied in the universities of Munich, Jena and Berlin. He was professor of mineralogy at Zurich from 1833 to 1844; afterward edited a radical political paper; removed to Prussia, but was obliged to leave, for political reasons; took part in the revolution of 1848, and was elected to the German Congress at Frankfort; was arrested and condemned to death for an attempt to excite a revolution in Vienna, but was pardoned. He subsequently traveled for several years in Central America, Mexico and California, returning to Germany as a naturalized American citizen. In 1862 he was an editor in Vienna; in 1867 founded the Süddeutsche Presse in Munich, which he edited until 1873, when he was made consul of the German Empire at Smyrna, and in 1876 was transferred to Algiers in the same capacity. Among his publications are System der Sozialen Politik (1847); Aus America (1857); Theorie der Politik (1861–64); Die Geschichtspunkte und Aufgaben der Politik (1878); Die Realistische Weltansicht und die Utilitarische Civilisation (1881); Ein Lebenslauf (1890). He died at Zurich on the 3rd of November 1893.
