Friedrich von Schlegel

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The critic and author Friedrich von Schlegel (1772-1829) was one of the chief founders of the German romantic movement. He is best known for his writings in literary theory and cultural history.

Friedrich von Schlegel was born in Hanover on March 10, 1772. He studied philosophy and literature at Göttingen University and later at Leipzig. Between 1794 and 1796 he lived in Dresden, later moving to Jena, making acquaintances in the literary circles of both cities. In Jena, Schlegel was especially influenced by the philosophy of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, whose teachings he later applied to literary theory.

In 1797 Schlegel moved to Berlin, where he associated with such romantic writers as Ludwig Tieck. In 1798 Schlegel published two essays, Vom Studium der griechischen Poesie (On the Study of Greek Poetry) and Geschichte der Poesie der Griechen und Römer (History of the Poetry of the Greeks and Romans), in which he expounded the thesis that the Greeks had achieved perfect harmony in their civilization and art. With other members of the romantic movement he edited the literary quarterly Athenaeum (1798-1800). In its pages he developed his literary theories - he considered romantic poetry to be a "progressively universal poetry," expanding its subject matter to include all aspects of life. An example of such "poetry" was Schlegel's experimental novel, Lucinde (1799), in which he analyzed the psychological details of his relationship with Dorothea Veit, the daughter of the Jewish intellectual Moses Mendelssohn. Friedrich and Dorothea were married in 1804.

After teaching briefly at the University of Jena, Schlegel moved to Paris in 1802, where he studied Oriental literature and culture. In 1808 he went to Cologne, converted to Roman Catholicism, and published a study of Indian culture, Ü ber die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier (On the Language and Wisdom of the Indians).

Although Schlegel had previously taught absolute freedom in thought and action and preached free love in his novel, in later years he tended toward increasing intellectual and political conservatism. He became affiliated with the Austrian government, at that time a reactionary force in European politics. In 1809 he became court secretary in Vienna, although he continued his literary activities. Between 1810 and 1812 he gave lectures in Vienna on medieval poets as forerunners of romanticism, and he perfected his philosophy of history, which viewed national cultures as organic developments. Among his translated lectures are The Philosophy of History, The Philosophy of Life and the Philosophy of Language, and The History of Literature.

In 1815 Schlegel assisted the Austrian delegation at the Congress of Vienna. In his later years he served as editor of the conservative journal Concordia. He died in Dresden on Jan. 12, 1829.

Further Reading

The best extensive treatment of Schlegel, especially his theoretical writings, is in Oskar Walzel, German Romanticism (1932). Walzel demonstrates Schlegel's central importance as a romantic theorist. More general discussions of Schlegel's life and work are in Walter Silz, Early German Romanticism (1929), and Ralph Tymms, German Romantic Literature (1955).

Additional Sources

Eichner, Hans, Friedrich Schlegel, New York, Twayne Publishers 1970.

Peter, Klaus, Friedrich Schlegel, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1978.

Schlegel, Friedrich von (Hanover, 1772-1829, Dresden), in full Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, younger brother of A. W. Schlegel, was the son of the pastor J. A. Schlegel and a nephew of the critic and dramatist J. E. Schlegel.

Intended for a commercial career, Schlegel was apprenticed to a banker in Leipzig before receiving parental permission to study. He was at Göttingen and Leipzig universities from 1790 to 1794, reading law before turning to classical studies. In 1796 he joined his brother A. W. Schlegel in Jena; both hoped that Schiller, not only the most notable literary figure but also professor of history at the university, might favourably influence their careers. Instead they soon alienated Schiller by unfavourable reviews of Die Horen and Der Musenalmanach. Friedrich Schlegel next moved to Berlin and, as a leading spirit of the new Romantic school (see Romantik), contributed to various journals, including Wieland's Der Teutsche Merkur and his brother's Athenäum. He applied the extreme subjectivism of J. G. Fichte to literature.

Schlegel's earliest publications were essays on classical antiquity, including Über die Diotima (published in Biesters Berlinische Monatsschrift, 1795), Über das Studium der griechischen Poesie (in Die Griechen und Römer, 1797), Geschichte der Poesie der Griechen und Römer (1798), and a provocative essay, Über Lessing (1797). His, in its day, sensational novel Lucinde (1799) reflects on his love for Dorothea Veit (see above), with whom he spent, after a brief spell as a lecturer in Jena (1801), two years in Paris; he married her in 1804. The Charakteristik der Meisterischen Lehrjahre von Goethe (1798) interprets Goethe's novel from a Romantic standpoint. His tragedy Alarcos (1802), when performed on the Weimar stage, was a complete failure. In 1808 Schlegel became a Roman Catholic and took service with the Austrian government, spending much of his later life in administration (including official participation in the Congress of Vienna (see Wiener Kongress) and diplomatic employment in Austrian service at the Frankfurt headquarters of the German Confederation, 1815-18). He was ennobled in 1815. In 1819 he visited Italy in the suite of Prince Metternich. He founded and edited the conservative journal Concordia (1820-3) which displays, along with Europa (1803-5) and the Deutsches Museum (1812-13), his journalistic acumen. He died of a stroke in Dresden, where he had gone to lecture on Philosophie der Sprache und des Wortes.

Schlegel's creative works are eccentric and negligible, but his critical writings, both the essays and the aphorisms and aperçus which he termed Fragmente (1796-1801), are brilliant, provocative, and fertile, and he not only exercised a considerable influence on the Romantics, but used his knowledge of the literature of different ages and peoples to promote German approaches to literary history and criticism. He contributed to German oriental studies with his treatise Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier (1808).

F. Schlegel published his Sämmtliche Werke (10 vols., containing revisions) in 1822-5 and in extended form (15 vols.) in 1845. The Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe, ed. E. Behler et al. appeared in 1958 ff. Correspondence includes Friedrich Schlegels Briefe an seinen Bruder August Wilhelm, ed. O. F. Walzel (1890), and Krisenjahre der Frühromantik. Briefe aus dem Schlegelkreis (3 vols.), ed. J. Körner, in 1936-58.

Schlegel, Friedrich von (1772-1829) German Romantic aesthetician, friend of Schleiermacher, Schelling, and Novalis. Educated in law at Göttingen and Leipzig, he subsequently devoted himself to literature, being in 1798 one of the founders of the Athenaeum, a principal organ of Romantic and classically oriented circles at Jena. His later study of Sanskrit and of Indian civilization contributed to his outstanding work, Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier (On the Language and Wisdom of India, 1808), after which he entered the service of Prince Metternich and the Austrian court, veering from his youthful rad-icalism to a kind of Catholic mysticism. Books include The Philosophy of History (tr. 1835), The Philosophy of Life and the Philosophy of Language (tr. 1847), and The History of Literature (tr. 1859).

Quotes:

"Every uneducated person is a caricature of himself."

"In actual life every great enterprise begins with and takes its first forward step in faith."

"Genius is, to be sure, not a matter of arbitrariness, but rather of freedom, just as wit, love, and faith, which once shall become arts and disciplines. We should demand genius from everybody, without, however, expecting it."

"It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind."

"Prudishness is pretense of innocence without innocence. Women have to remain prudish as long as men are sentimental, dense, and evil enough to demand of them eternal innocence and lack of education. For innocence is the only thing which can ennoble lack of education."

"Irony is the form of paradox. Paradox is what is good and great at the same time."

See more famous quotes by Friedrich Schlegel