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In the postwar search for German national heroes, preferably committed democrats, scholars have rediscovered the Berlin wit and journalist Adolph Glassbrenner (1810–76). In the series of exhibitions about Prussia which flooded West Berlin in 1981 Glassbrenner's memorabilia surfaced with regularity. He even merited a small exhibition of his own and a biography in the seriesPreussische Köpfe. Berlin enthusiasts and aficionados of German folk culture praise him as a quaint, local humorist while others, primarily academic Germanists and historians, point to his activities as a liberal opponent of the Prussian state before the revolution of 1848. None of these many admirers would argue, however, that Glassbrenner was a major literary talent or a particularly original political thinker.