Friedrich Schlegel | |
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 Friedrich Schlegel in 1801 | |
| Born | Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772-03-10)10 March 1772 |
| Died | 12 January 1829(1829-01-12) (aged 56) |
| Education | |
| Alma mater | |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | 19th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | |
| Main interests | Epistemology,philology,philosophy of history |
| Notable ideas |
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Karl Wilhelm Friedrich (after 1814:von)Schlegel (/ˈʃleɪɡəl/SHLAY-gəl;[3]German:[ˈfʁiːdʁɪçˈʃleːɡl̩]; 10 March 1772 – 12 January 1829) was a Germanliterary critic,philosopher, andIndologist. With his older brother,August Wilhelm Schlegel, he was one of the main figures ofJena Romanticism.
Born into a ferventlyProtestant family, Schlegel rejected religion as a young man in favor ofatheism andindividualism. He entered university to studylaw but instead focused onclassical literature. He began a career as a writer and lecturer, and founded journals such asAthenaeum. In 1808, Schlegel returned toChristianity as a married man with both him and his wife being baptized into theCatholic Church. This conversion ultimately led to his estrangement from family and old friends. He moved toAustria in 1809, where he became adiplomat andjournalist in service ofKlemens von Metternich, the Foreign Minister of the Austrian Empire. Schlegel died in 1829, at the age of 56.[4]
Schlegel was a promoter of theRomantic movement and inspiredSamuel Taylor Coleridge,Adam Mickiewicz andKazimierz Brodziński. The first to notice what became known asGrimm's law, Schlegel was a pioneer inIndo-European studies,comparative linguistics, andmorphological typology, publishing in 1819 the first theory linking theIndo-Iranian andGerman languages under theAryan group.[5][6] Some of his works were set to music bySchubert,Mendelssohn andSchumann.
Karl Friedrich von Schlegel was born on 10 March 1772 atHanover, where his father,Johann Adolf Schlegel, was the pastor at the LutheranMarket Church. For two years he studiedlaw atGöttingen andLeipzig, and he met withFriedrich Schiller. In 1793 he devoted himself entirely to literary work. In 1796 he moved toJena, where his brother August Wilhelm lived, and here he collaborated withNovalis,Ludwig Tieck,Fichte, andCaroline Schelling, who married August Wilhelm. In 1797 he quarreled with Schiller, who did not like his polemic work.[7]
Schlegel publishedDie Griechen und Römer (The Greeks and Romans), which was followed byGeschichte der Poesie der Griechen und Römer (History of the Poesy of the Greeks and Romans) (1798). Then he turned toDante,Goethe, andShakespeare. In Jena he and his brother founded the journalAthenaeum, contributing fragments,aphorisms, andessays in which the principles of theRomantic school are most definitely stated. They are now generally recognized as the deepest and most significant expressions of the subjective idealism of the early Romanticists.[8]
After a controversy, Friedrich decided to move to Berlin. There he lived withFriedrich Schleiermacher and metHenriette Herz,Rahel Varnhagen, and his future wife,Dorothea Veit, a daughter ofMoses Mendelssohn.[4] In 1799 he published Part I ofLucinde, A Novel, which was seen as an account of his affair with Dorothea, causing a scandal in German literary circles. The novel, to which no further parts were ever added, attempted to apply the Romantic demand for completeindividual freedom topractical ethics.[9]Lucinde, which extolled the union of sensual and spirituallove as anallegory of the divine cosmicEros, contributed to the failure of his academic career in Jena[8] where he completed his studies in 1801 and lectured as aPrivatdozent ontranscendental philosophy. In September 1800, he met four times with Goethe, who would later stage his tragedyAlarcos (1802) in Weimar, albeit with a notable lack of success.
In June 1802 he arrived inParis, where he lived in the house formerly owned byBaron d'Holbach and joined a circle includingHeinrich Christoph Kolbe. He lectured on philosophy in private courses forSulpiz Boisserée, and under the tutelage ofAntoine-Léonard de Chézy and linguistAlexander Hamilton he continued to studySanskrit and thePersian language. He edited the journalEuropa (1803), where he published essays aboutGothic architecture and theOld Masters. In April 1804 he married Dorothea Veit in the Swedish embassy in Paris, after she had undergone the requisite conversion fromJudaism to Protestantism. In 1806 he and his wife went to visitAubergenville, where his brother lived withMadame de Staël.
In 1808, he publishedÜber die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier (On the Language and Wisdom of India). Here he advanced his ideas about religion and argued thata people originating from India were the founders of the first European civilizations. Schlegel comparedSanskrit withLatin,Greek,Persian, andGerman, noting many similarities invocabulary andgrammar. The assertion of the common features of these languages is now generally accepted, albeit with significant revisions. There is less agreement about the geographic region where these precursors settled, although the Out-of-India model has generally become discredited.
In 1808, he and his wife joined theCatholic Church in theCologne Cathedral. From this time on, he became more and more opposed to the principles of political and religious liberalism. He went to Vienna and in 1809 was appointed imperial court secretary at the military headquarters, editing the army newspaper and issuing fiery proclamations against Napoleon. He accompaniedarchduke Charles, Duke of Teschen to war and was stationed inPest during theWar of the Fifth Coalition. Here he studied theHungarian language. Meanwhile, he had published his collectedGeschichte (Histories) (1809) and two series of lectures,Über die neuere Geschichte (On Recent History) (1811) andGeschichte der alten und neuen Literatur (On Old and New Literature) (1815). In 1814 he was knighted in theSupreme Order of Christ.
In collaboration with Josef von Pilat, editor of theÖsterreichischer Beobachter, and with the help ofAdam Müller and Friedrich Schlegel,Metternich andGentz projected a vision of Austria as the spiritual leader of a new Germany, drawing her strength and inspiration from a romanticised view of a medieval Catholic past.[10]
Following theCongress of Vienna (1815), he was councilor of legation in the Austrian embassy at theFrankfurt Diet, but in 1818 he returned to Vienna. In 1819 he andClemens Brentano made a trip to Rome, in the company ofMetternich andGentz. There he met with his wife and her sons. In 1820 he started aconservative Catholic magazine,Concordia (1820–1823), but was criticized by Metternich and by his brother August Wilhelm, then professor of Indology in Bonn and busy publishing theBhagavad Gita. Schlegel began the issue of hisSämtliche Werke (Collected Works). He also delivered lectures, which were republished in hisPhilosophie des Lebens (Philosophy of Life) (1828) and in hisPhilosophie der Geschichte (Philosophy of History) (1829). He died on 12 January 1829 atDresden, while preparing a series of lectures.
Friedrich Schlegel's wife,Dorothea von Schlegel, authored an unfinished romance,Florentin (1802), aSammlung romantischer Dichtungen des Mittelalters (Collection of Romantic Poems of the Middle Ages) (2 volumes, 1804), a version ofLother und Maller (1805), and a translation of Madame de Staël'sCorinne (1807–1808) — all of which were issued under her husband's name. By her first marriage she had two sons,Johannes andPhilipp Veit, who became eminent Catholic painters. She was the eldest daughter ofMoses Mendelssohn which made the prodigious composersFelix andFanny her niece and nephew.
Friedrich Schlegel'sSämtliche Werke appeared in 10 volumes (1822–1825); a second edition (1846) in 55 volumes HisProsaische Jugendschriften (1794–1802) have been edited by J. Minor (1882, 2nd edition 1906); there are also reprints ofLucinde, and F. Schleiermacher'sVertraute 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 zu F. Schlegels „Lucinde" (1905); M. Joachimi,DieWeltanschauung 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).
{{cite encyclopedia}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)....when Friedrich Schlegel, a German scholar who was an important earlyIndo-Europeanist, came up with a theory that linked the Indo-Iranian words with the German wordEhre, 'honor', and older Germanic names containing the elementario-, such as theSwiss [sic] warriorAriovistus who was written about byJulius Caesar. Schlegel theorized that far from being just a designation of the Indo-Iranians, the word*arya- had in fact been what the Indo-Europeans called themselves, meaning [according to Schlegel] something like 'the honorable people.' (This theory has since been called into question.)
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Schlegel, Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 24 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 329–330.
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