Schlegel

Friedrich Schlegel (1772-1829)

Friedrich Schlegel, together with his brother August Wilhelm Schlegel and Novalis (whom he met in 1792), was one of the leaders of the early Romantic movement in Germany. He spent the 1790s in Leipzig and Jena, before moving to Berlin in 1797.

Friedrich Schlegel was the greatest Romantic theorist. Between 1797 and 1800 he edited the Romantic periodical the Athenaeum together with his brother August Wilhelm.

The famous Athenäum Fragment number 116 (published 1798) begins as follows:

Die romantische Poesie ist eine progressive Universalpoesie. Ihre Bestimmung ist nicht bloß, alle getrennten Gattungen der Poesie wieder zu vereinigen und die Poesie mit der Philosophie und Rhetorik in Berührung zu setzen. Sie will und soll auch Poesie und Prosa, Genialität und Kritik, Kunstpoesie und Naturpoesie bald mischen, bald verschmelzen, die Poesie lebendig und gesellig und das Leben und die Gesellschaft poetisch machen, den Witz poetisieren und die Formen der Kunst mit gediegnem Bildungsstoff jeder Art anfüllen und sättigen und durch die Schwingungen des Humors beseelen.

Source: Friedrich Schlegel, Kritische Schriften, ed. by Wolfdietrich Rasch (Munich: Hanser, 1971), pp. 38-39

Romantic poetry is progressive universal poetry. Its aim is not simply to reunite all the separate genres of poetry and for poetry to make contact with philosophy and rhetoric. It also wants to, and should, combine and fuse poetry and prose, inspiration and criticism, the poetry of art and that of nature; to make poetry lively and sociable, and to make life and society poetic, to poeticize wit, to fill and saturate the forms of art with decent educational stuff of every kind and to animate them with vibrations of humour.

Friedrich Schlegel wrote one novel, Lucinde (1799), which was inspired by his love affair for Dorothea Veit. Schlegel met her in 1797. In 1798 Dorothea Veit she divorced her husband and moved in with Schlegel; the couple married in 1804. In 1808 Friedrich and Dorothea Schlegel moved to Vienna and converted to Roman Catholicism. In Vienna, Friedrich Schlegel worked for the Austrian civil service for two decades. He moved to Dresden in 1828, and died the following year.

Together with his brother August Wilhelm, Friedrich Schlegel was one of the founders of indology, the study of the languages of the Indian subcontinent.

Friedrich Schlegel’s works include:

Über das Studium der griechischen Poesie; On the Study of Greek Poetry (1797)

Über Lessing; On Lessing (1797)

Lucinde (1799)

Gespräch über die Poesie; Conversation on Poetry (1800)

Über die Unverständlichkeit; On Incomprehensibility (1800)

Alarcos, Drama in Two Acts (1802)

Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Inder; On the Language and Wisdom of the Indians (1808)

Further Reading in English

Hans Eichner, Friedrich Schlegel (New York: Twayne, 1970)

Lilian R. Furst, Romanticism in Perspective: a comparative study of aspects of the Romantic movements in England, France and Germany (London: Macmillan, 1969)

Lilian R. Furst, Romanticism (New York and London: Routledge, 1974)

Paul Hamilton, Realpoetik: European Romanticism and Literary Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), Chapter 5 on Friedrich Schlegel, pp. 123-44

Further Reading in German

Bernd Auerochs, Die Entstehung der Kunstreligion, Palaestra 323 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006)

Johannes Endres, Friedrich Schlegel-Handbuch: Leben – Werk – Wirkung (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2017)

Friedrich Schlegel, Kritische Schriften, ed. by Wolfdietrich Rasch (Munich: Hanser, 1971)

Web Link in German

http://www.schlegel-gesellschaft.de/

Friedrich Schlegel Society