Friedrich Schlegel was a German writer, cultural philosopher, literary and art critic, historian, classical philologist, linguist, Indologist, and poet. Along with his wife Dorothea Schlegel, his older brother August Schlegel, August's wife Caroline Schlegel, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Ludwig Tieck, and Novalis, he was a key figure of the early Romantic movement, which originated in Jena. Moreover, Schlegel is considered a pioneer in Indo-European studies, Indology, comparative linguistics, and language typology.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich was born on 10 Mar 1772 in Hannover. He was the son of pastor Johann Adolph Schlegel and Johanna Erdmuthe, née Hübsch.[1]
He moved to Göttingen to live with his older brother August and enrolled at the University of Göttingen in 1790 to study law, but turned to classical philology, which he studied under Christian Gottlob Heyne. From 1791 to 1793 he studied law at Leipzig. In 1793 he began a career as a writer and lecturer, devoting himself entirely to literature, in particular literature of Ancient Greece. Due to lack of money, he moved to Dresden in 1794 to live with his sister Charlotte and devoted himself to intensive self-study of Greek literature.[2] In 1796 he followed his brother August and his wife Caroline to Jena, where he became increasingly interested in philosophy and modern literature. In 1797 August and Friedrich Schlegel broke with Friedrich Schiller (whom Friedrich Schlegel had first met as a student), but were still on good terms with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The Schlegel brothers founded Athenaeum (1798-1800), the organ of Early Romanticism. Other important contributors were Dorothea Schlegel, Caroline Schlegel, Novalis, August Ferdinand Bernhardi, Sophie Bernhardi, and Friedrich Schleiermacher. In 1797 Friedrich moved to Berlin and lived in an apartment with Schleiermacher. In the literary salons of Henriette Herz and Rahel Varnhagen von Ense, he made the acquaintance of Dorothea Veit, with whom he began living together after her divorce in Jan 1799. In 1799 Friedrich and August Schlegel and their wives/partners lived together in Jena and stimulated the exchange of the Early Romanticists. In August 1800, Friedrich Schlegel habilitated at the University of Jena and began teaching as a "Privatdozent".[3][4]
In June 1802 he arrived in Paris to study the art collections. There he lived in the former home of Baron d'Holbach, together with linguist Alexander Hamilton, who was one of the few Sanskrit experts of his time. Schlegel devoted himself to the study of Indology, Sanskrit, and the Persian language under the tutelage of Hamilton and Antoine-Léonard de Chézy. He became interested in comparative linguistics, leading to findings about the first sound shift ("Grimm's law" or "First Germanic Sound Shift") in 1806 and about morphological language typology.[3][4]
On 6 Apr 1804 Friedrich married Dorothea Veit, née Mendelssohn, in Paris, after she had converted from Judaism to Protestantism.[5] They moved to Cologne (Köln) the same year, and Schlegel studied the medieval art treasures and lectured at the École Centrale. In 1804 he visited his brother August, who lived and worked in the household of Madame de Staël at Coppet Castle in Switzerland. In 1806 he and his wife stayed at the Château d'Acosta in Aubergenville for six months, with its owner, the Marquis de Castellane, and his guests, Mme de Staël and Benjamin Constant.[4]
In 1808 Schlegel published the book Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier (On the Language and Wisdom of India). In the book he compared Sanskrit with Latin, Greek, Persian and German, noting many similarities in vocabulary and grammar.[4]
As a young man, Friedrich had been an atheist, a radical, and an individualist. In 1808 he and his wife converted to Catholicism. This conversion ultimately led to his estrangement from family and old friends. Schlegel and his wife moved to Austria in 1809, where he became a diplomat in the service of Klemens von Metternich, the conservative Foreign Minister of the Austrian Empire.[3] In 1810 Schlegel also began working as a journalist and gave lectures on history. Since 1814 or 1815 he used his Prussian title of nobility, which the family had not used for a century and which his brother August had requested and received in 1812. From 1815 to 1818 von Schlegel was an Austrian Secretary ("Legationsrat") at the Bundestag in Frankfurt/Main. In 1819 he accompanied Emperor Franz II and Metternich as an art expert on a trip to Rome, where Dorothea was staying with her sons, who were working there as painters. After leaving the Austrian service, Schlegel devoted himself to the edition of his Sämtliche Werke (Complete Works) in Vienna from 1822 to 1825 and gave lectures on the philosophy of history.[4]
On 12 Jan 1829 Friedrich died unexpectedly on a trip to Dresden, where he was preparing lectures on the philosophy of language and the word. He was buried on 14 Jan 1829 at the Old Catholic Cemetery in Dresden.[4][6] He remained childless.
See also:
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