Jakob Friedrich Abel

Abel, Jakob Friedrich (Vaihingen, 1751-1829, Schorndorf), one of Schiller's teachers, was appointed professor of philosophy at the Militär-Akademie at the Solitude in 1772. It was he who first introduced Schiller to Shakespeare's plays. In 1790 he was appointed to a chair of philosophy at Tübingen, and in 1823 he became general superintendent in Stuttgart. The episode underlying Schiller's story Der Verbrecher aus verlorener Ehre (1786) was experienced by his father, and Abel himself published an account of it in Sammlung und Erklärung merkwürdiger Erscheinungen aus dem menschlichen Leben (1787).