Harro Paul Harring, a German author, born at Ibensdorf, near Husum, in Schleswig, Aug. 28, 1798, died by his own hand in the island of Jersey, May 25, 1870. He was the son of a landed proprietor of Friesland, but received only a scanty education, and was obliged to accept a small clerkship in the custom house. Subsequently he devoted himself to painting and literature in various places, and after publishing two volumes of poetry at Schleswig in 1821 he wrote a sketch of his adventurous life and travels entitled Rhonghar Jarr, Fahr-ten eines Friesen in Danemark, Deutschland, Ungarn, etc. (4 vols., Munich, 1828). In 1828 he joined a Philhellenic expedition to Greece, but soon went to Rome, and next to Warsaw, where he served for a few months in the army. His Polish experiences were embodied in his novel Der Pole (3 vols., Baireuth, 1831), and in his Memoiren uber Polen unter russischer Herrschaft (2 vols., Nuremberg, 1831; French, Strasburg, 1833). On account of his revolutionary tendencies he was subsequently expelled from Bavaria and Saxony, and in 1836 he was arrested in Bern and sent to England, where in 1837 he was wounded in a duel.

Ho next attempted to publish in Heligoland revolutionary songs for circulation in Germany, but was arrested and sent back to England. On returning to that island in 1839 he was sent as a prisoner on a vessel bound to England, but jumping overboard he was picked up by a French ship, and afterward lived successively in England, Brazil, and the United States. In 1849 he arrived in Norway, whence he was expelled in the following year. He then became a member of the European central democratic committee in London, to which city he returned in 1856 after having been in 1834 under arrest in Harburg, and after having spent again some time in Brazil. Although he occasionally received assistance from his friends at subsequent periods, misery and discontent made him commit suicide. His publications comprise, besides poems, plays, and miscellaneous writings, many novels, of which " Dolores," the scene of which was in South America, written in English and published in New York in 1844 (German, 4 vols., Basel, 1858-9), is considered the best.