 Hofmann spent his retirement pursuing activities such as breeding domestic canaries but became a somewhat famous figure among "Vormärz" liberals and was visited by intellectuals such as Hoffmann von Fallersleben and .He died on 6 September 1849, having witnessed the failure of the 1848 revolution, and was buried without a Catholic funeral.Andreas Joseph Hofmann was the son of Anton Hofmann, a surgeon, and of Magdalena Fahrmann.