Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (10 March 1772 – 12 January 1829) was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

, critic

Critic

A critic is anyone who expresses a value judgement. Informally, criticism is a common aspect of all human expression and need not necessarily imply skilled or accurate expressions of judgement. Critical judgements, good or bad, may be positive , negative , or balanced...

 and scholar. With his older brother, August Wilhelm Schlegel, he was a critical leader of German Romanticism

German Romanticism

For the general context, see Romanticism.In the philosophy, art, and culture of German-speaking countries, German Romanticism was the dominant movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. German Romanticism developed relatively late compared to its English counterpart, coinciding in its...

.

Life and work

Schlegel was born at Hanover

Hanover

Hanover or Hannover, on the river Leine, is the capital of the federal state of Lower Saxony , Germany and was once by personal union the family seat of the Hanoverian Kings of Great Britain, under their title as the dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg...

. He studied law

Law

Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...

 at Göttingen and Leipzig

University of Leipzig

The University of Leipzig , located in Leipzig in the Free State of Saxony, Germany, is one of the oldest universities in the world and the second-oldest university in Germany...

, but ultimately devoted himself entirely to literary studies. He published in 1797 Die Griechen und Römer (The Greeks and Romans), which was followed by Geschichte der Poesie der Griechen und Römer (The History of the Poetry of the Greeks and Romans) (1798). At Jena, where he lectured as a Privatdozent

Privatdozent

Privatdozent or Private lecturer is a title conferred in some European university systems, especially in German-speaking countries, for someone who pursues an academic career and holds all formal qualifications to become a tenured university professor...

 at the university, he co-founded the Athenaeum

Athenaeum (literary journal)

The Athenaeum was a literary journal started in 1798 by August Wilhelm and Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel. It is considered to be the founding publication of German Romanticism.-Contributors:...

, contributing to that journal the aphorisms and essays in which the principles of the Romantic

Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

 school are most definitely stated. Here also he wrote Lucinde (1799), an unfinished romance, which is interesting as an attempt to transfer to practical ethics the Romantic demand for complete individual freedom, and Alarcos, a tragedy (1802) in which, without much success, he combined romantic and classical elements. Lucinde, in which he extolled the union of sensual and spiritual love as an allegory of the divine cosmic Eros, caused a great scandal by its manifest autobiographical character, and contributed to the failure of his academic career in Jena.

In 1802 he went to Paris, where he had a circle including Heinrich Christoph Kolbe

Heinrich Christoph Kolbe

Heinrich Christoph Kolbe was a German painter.-Life:Kolbe was born and died in Düsseldorf. After his education at the 'old' Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and then went to Paris for ten years to study. He was part of the circle of Friedrich Schlegel and worked on the review "Europa". He later worked in...

 and edited the review Europa (1803), lectured on philosophy and carried on Oriental studies, some results of which he embodied in an epoch-making book, Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier (On the Language and Wisdom of India) (1808). In the same year in which this work appeared, he and his wife Dorothea

Dorothea von Schlegel

Dorothea von Schlegel was a German novelist and translator.-Biography :Dorothea von Schlegel was born in 1764 in Berlin. Oldest daughter of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, a leading figure in the German Enlightenment...

 (1763–1839), a daughter of Moses Mendelssohn

Moses Mendelssohn

Moses Mendelssohn was a German Jewish philosopher to whose ideas the renaissance of European Jews, Haskalah is indebted...

 and the mother of Philipp Veit

Philipp Veit

Philipp Veit was a German Romantic painter. To Veit is due the credit of having been the first to revive the almost forgotten technique of fresco painting.- Biography :Veit was born in Berlin, Prussia...

, joined the Roman Catholic Church

Roman Catholic Church

The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...

, and from this time he became more and more opposed to the principles of political and religious freedom. He went to Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

 and in 1809 was appointed imperial court secretary at the headquarters of the archduke Charles.

At a later period he was councillor of legation in the Austrian embassy at the Frankfurt diet, but in 1818 he returned to Vienna. Meanwhile he had published his collected Geschichte (Histories) (1809) and two series of lectures, Über die neuere Geschichte (On the New History) (1811) and Geschichte der alten und neuen Literatur (On old and new literature) (1815). After his return to Vienna from Frankfurt he edited Concordia (1820–1823), and began the issue of his Sämtliche Werke (Collected Works). He also delivered lectures, which were republished in his Philosophie des Lebens (Philosophy of Life) (1828) and in his Philosophie der Geschichte (Philosophy of History) (1829). He died on 12 January 1829 at Dresden.

Evaluation

A permanent place in the history of German literature belongs to Friedrich Schlegel and his brother August Wilhelm as the critical leaders of the Romantic school, which derived from them most of its governing ideas as to the characteristics of the Middle Ages, and as to the methods of literary expression. Of the two brothers, Friedrich was unquestionably the more original genius. He was the real founder of the Romantic school; to him more than to any other member of the school we owe the revolutionizing and germinating ideas which influenced so profoundly the development of German literature at the beginning of the 19th century.

Dorothea Schlegel

Friedrich Schlegel's wife, Dorothea von Schlegel

Dorothea von Schlegel

Dorothea von Schlegel was a German novelist and translator.-Biography :Dorothea von Schlegel was born in 1764 in Berlin. Oldest daughter of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, a leading figure in the German Enlightenment...

, a daughter of Felix Mendelssohn

Felix Mendelssohn

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...

, was the author of an unfinished romance, Florentin (180,), a Sammlung romantischer Dichtungen des Mittelalters (Collection of Romantic Writings of the Middle Ages) (2 vols., 1804), a version of Lother und Maller (1805), and a translation of Madame de Staël's Corinne (1807–1808) - all of which were issued under her husband's name. By her first marriage she had a son, Philipp Veit

Philipp Veit

Philipp Veit was a German Romantic painter. To Veit is due the credit of having been the first to revive the almost forgotten technique of fresco painting.- Biography :Veit was born in Berlin, Prussia...

, who became an eminent painter.

Selected works

Friedrich Schlegel's Sämtliche Werke appeared in 10 vols. (1822–1825); a second edition (1846) in 55 vols. His Prosaische Jugendschriften (1794–1802) have been edited by J. Minor (1882, 2nd ed. 1906); there are also reprints of Lucinde, and F. Schleiermacher's Vertraute Briefe über Lucinde, 1800 (1907). See R. Haym, Die romantische Schule (1870); I. Rouge, F. Schlegel et la genie du romantisme allemand (1904); by the same, Erläuterungen In F. Schiegels Lucinde (1905); M. Joachimi, Die Weltanschauung der Romantik (1905); W. Glawe, Die Religion F. Schlegels (1906); E. Kircher, Philosophie der Romantik (1906); M. Frank '"Unendliche Annäherung" Die Anfänge der philosophischen Frühromantik' (1997); Andrew Bowie From Romanticism to Critical Theory. The Philosophy of German Literary Theory (1997).

On Dorothea Schlegel see J. M. Raich, Dorothea von Schiegel und deren Söhne (1881); F. Diebel, Dorothea Schlegel als Schriftsteller im Zusammenhang mit der romantischen Schule (1905).

For a philosophical exegesis of early romantic theory focused on F. Schlegel, Novalis, and the Athenaeum see Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe

Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe

Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe was a French philosopher. He was also a literary critic and translator....

 and Jean-Luc Nancy

Jean-Luc Nancy

Jean-Luc Nancy is a French philosopher.Nancy's first book, published in 1973, was Le titre de la lettre , a reading of the work of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, written in collaboration with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe...

 "The Literary Absolute: The Theory of Literature in German Romanticism" (1978).

Letters

• Ludwig Tieck und die Brüder Schlegel. Briefe ed. by Edgar Lohner (München 1972)

Literature

• Berman, Antoine
  Antoine Berman
  Antoine Berman was a French translator, historian and theorist of translation.- Works :* L'épreuve de l'étranger: Culture et traduction dans l’Allemagne romantique: Herder, Goethe, Schlegel, Novalis, Humboldt, Schleiermacher, Hölderlin. Paris: Gallimard, 1984* Lettres à Fouad El-Etr sur le...
  
  . L'épreuve de l'étranger. Culture et traduction dans l'Allemagne romantique: Herder, Goethe, Schlegel, Novalis, Humboldt, Schleiermacher, Hölderlin., Paris, Gallimard, Essais, 1984. ISBN 978-2070700769

External links

• Schlegel, Friedrich von, 1841
• Schlegel, Friedrich von, 1772–1829; Robertson, James Burton, 1800–1877, 1846
• Schiller, Friedrich
  Friedrich Schiller
  Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life , Schiller struck up a productive, if complicated, friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe...
  
  , 1759–1805; Körner, Christian Gottfried, 1756–1831; Simpson, Leonard Francis, translated 1849
• Schlegel, Friedrich von, 1855
• Friedrich von Schlegel, Ellen J . Millington, 1860
• Samuel Paul Capen, 1903
• Wilson, Augusta Manie, 1908
• Calvin Thomas, 1913 .