August Wilhelm Schlegel (September 8, 1767 – May 12, 1845) was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

, translator

Translation

Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...

, critic

Critic

A critic is anyone who expresses a value judgement. Informally, criticism is a common aspect of all human expression and need not necessarily imply skilled or accurate expressions of judgement. Critical judgements, good or bad, may be positive , negative , or balanced...

, and a foremost leader of German Romanticism

German Romanticism

For the general context, see Romanticism.In the philosophy, art, and culture of German-speaking countries, German Romanticism was the dominant movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. German Romanticism developed relatively late compared to its English counterpart, coinciding in its...

. His translations of Shakespeare made the English dramatist's works into German classics.

Life and work

Schlegel was born at Hanover

Hanover

Hanover or Hannover, on the river Leine, is the capital of the federal state of Lower Saxony , Germany and was once by personal union the family seat of the Hanoverian Kings of Great Britain, under their title as the dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg...

, where his father, Johann Adolf Schlegel

Johann Adolf Schlegel

Johann Adolf Schlegel was a German poet and clergyman.He was born in Meißen, Saxony, and was the brother of Johann Elias Schlegel. After finishing his studies in Leipzig, he became a deacon and teacher at Pforta in 1751. In 1754, he became a pastor and professor in Zerbst, before moving to become...

, was a Lutheran pastor. He was educated at the Hanover gymnasium and at the university of Göttingen. At the University of Göttingen, he received a thorough philological training under Heyne

Christian Gottlob Heyne

Christian Gottlob Heyne was a German classical scholar and archaeologist as well as long-time director of the Göttingen State and University Library.-Biography:He was born in Chemnitz, Electorate of Saxony...

 and became an admirer and friend of Bürger

Gottfried August Bürger

Gottfried August Bürger was a German poet. His ballads were very popular in Germany. His most noted ballad, Lenore, found an audience beyond readers of the German language in an English adaptation and a French translation.-Biography:He was born in Molmerswende , Principality of Halberstadt, where...

, with whom he was engaged in an ardent study of Dante

DANTE

Delivery of Advanced Network Technology to Europe is a not-for-profit organisation that plans, builds and operates the international networks that interconnect the various national research and education networks in Europe and surrounding regions...

, Petrarch

Petrarch

Francesco Petrarca , known in English as Petrarch, was an Italian scholar, poet and one of the earliest humanists. Petrarch is often called the "Father of Humanism"...

 and Shakespeare. From 1791 to 1795, Schlegel was tutor in a Dutch banker's family at Amsterdam

Amsterdam

Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...

.

In 1796, soon after his return to Germany, Schlegel settled in Jena

Jena

Jena is a university city in central Germany on the river Saale. It has a population of approx. 103,000 and is the second largest city in the federal state of Thuringia, after Erfurt.-History:Jena was first mentioned in an 1182 document...

, following an invitation of Schiller

Friedrich Schiller

Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life , Schiller struck up a productive, if complicated, friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe...

. That year he married Karoline

Karoline Schelling

Caroline Schelling, née Michaelis, widowed Böhmer, divorced Schlegel was a noted German intellectual.She was born at Göttingen, the daughter of the orientalist Michaelis....

, the widow of the physician Böhmer. She assisted Schlegel in some of his literary productions, and the publication of her correspondence in 1871 established for her a posthumous reputation as a German letter writer. She separated from Schlegel in 1801 and became the wife of the philosopher Schelling soon after.

In Jena, Schlegel made critical contributions to Schiller's Horen

Die Horen (Schiller)

Die Horen was a monthly German literary journal published from 1795 to 1797. It was printed by the Cotta publishing house in Tübingen and edited and run by Friedrich Schiller...

, to that author's Musenalmanach, and to the Jenaer Allgemeine Litteratur-Zeitung. He also did translations from Dante and Shakespeare. This work established his literary reputation and gained for him in 1798 an extraordinary professorship at the University of Jena. His house became the intellectual headquarters of the “romanticists,” and was visited at various times between 1796 to 1801 by Fichte

Johann Gottlieb Fichte

Johann Gottlieb Fichte was a German philosopher. He was one of the founding figures of the philosophical movement known as German idealism, a movement that developed from the theoretical and ethical writings of Immanuel Kant...

, Friedrich Schlegel, Schelling

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling , later von Schelling, was a German philosopher. Standard histories of philosophy make him the midpoint in the development of German idealism, situating him between Fichte, his mentor prior to 1800, and Hegel, his former university roommate and erstwhile friend...

, Tieck

Ludwig Tieck

Johann Ludwig Tieck was a German poet, translator, editor, novelist, writer of Novellen, and critic, who was one of the founding fathers of the Romantic movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.-Early life:...

, Novalis

Novalis

Novalis was the pseudonym of Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg , an author and philosopher of early German Romanticism.-Biography:...

 and others.

With his brother Friedrich, Schlegel founded Athenaeum

Athenaeum (literary journal)

The Athenaeum was a literary journal started in 1798 by August Wilhelm and Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel. It is considered to be the founding publication of German Romanticism.-Contributors:...

 (1798-1800), the organ of the Romantic school. He also published a volume of poems, and carried on a rather bitter controversy with Kotzebue.
At this time the two brothers were remarkable for the vigour and freshness of their ideas, and commanded respect as the leaders of the new Romantic criticism. A volume of their joint essays appeared in 1801 under the title Charakteristiken und Kritiken. In 1802 Schlegel went to Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

, where he delivered lectures on art and literature; and in the following year he published Ion, a tragedy in Euripidean

Euripides

Euripides was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him but according to the Suda it was ninety-two at most...

 style, which gave rise to a suggestive discussion on the principles of dramatic poetry. This was followed by Spanisches Theater (2 vols, 1803/1809), in which he presented admirable translations of five of Calderon

Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Pedro Calderón de la Barca y Barreda González de Henao Ruiz de Blasco y Riaño usually referred as Pedro Calderón de la Barca , was a dramatist, poet and writer of the Spanish Golden Age. During certain periods of his life he was also a soldier and a Roman Catholic priest...

's plays; and in another volume, Blumensträusse italienischer, spanischer und portugiesischer Poesie (1804), he gave translations of Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

, Portuguese

Portuguese language

Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...

 and Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

 lyrics; his translations included works by Dante and Camoens

Luís de Camões

Luís Vaz de Camões is considered Portugal's and the Portuguese language's greatest poet. His mastery of verse has been compared to that of Shakespeare, Vondel, Homer, Virgil and Dante. He wrote a considerable amount of lyrical poetry and drama but is best remembered for his epic work Os Lusíadas...

.

Schlegel's translation of Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

, begun in Jena, was ultimately completed, under the superintendence of Ludwig Tieck

Ludwig Tieck

Johann Ludwig Tieck was a German poet, translator, editor, novelist, writer of Novellen, and critic, who was one of the founding fathers of the Romantic movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.-Early life:...

, by Tieck's daughter Dorothea

Dorothea Tieck

Dorothea Tieck was a German translator, known particularly for her translations of William Shakespeare. She was born in Berlin, Brandenburg, as the daughter of Ludwig Tieck, and collaborated with her father and his Romantic literary circle, including August Wilhelm Schlegel and Wolf Heinrich Graf...

 and Wolf Heinrich Graf von Baudissin. This rendering is one of the best poetical translations in German, or indeed in any language. Schlegel's sister-in-law (his brother Friedrich's wife) was an aunt of composer Felix Mendelssohn

Felix Mendelssohn

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...

. In 1826, Mendelssohn, at the age of 17, was inspired by August Wilhelm's translation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream

A Midsummer Night's Dream

A Midsummer Night's Dream is a play that was written by William Shakespeare. It is believed to have been written between 1590 and 1596. It portrays the events surrounding the marriage of the Duke of Athens, Theseus, and the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta...

 to write his concert overture for A Midsummer Night's Dream.

After a divorce from his wife Karoline, in 1804, Schlegel traveled in France, Germany, Italy and other countries with Madame de Staël, as tutor to her sons and adviser in her literary work. She owed to him many of the ideas which she embodied in her work, De l'Allemagne. In 1807 he attracted much attention in France by an essay in the French language

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

, Comparaison entre la Phèdre de Racine et celle d'Euripide, in which he attacked French classicism from the standpoint of the Romantic school. His lectures on dramatic art and literature (Über dramatische Kunst und Literatur, 1809–1811), which have been translated into most European languages, were delivered at Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

 in 1808.

From 1813 to 1817, he acted as secretary of the crown prince of Sweden, through whose influence the right of his family to noble rank was revived. After this, he joined again the household of Mme. de Staël until her death in 1817. Schlegel was made a professor of literature at the University of Bonn

University of Bonn

The University of Bonn is a public research university located in Bonn, Germany. Founded in its present form in 1818, as the linear successor of earlier academic institutions, the University of Bonn is today one of the leading universities in Germany. The University of Bonn offers a large number...

 in 1818, and during the remainder of his life occupied himself chiefly with oriental studies. He founded a special printing office for Sanskrit

Sanskrit

Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...

. As an orientalist, he was unable to adapt himself to the new methods opened by Bopp

Franz Bopp

Franz Bopp was a German linguist known for extensive comparative work on Indo-European languages.-Biography:...

.

He continued to lecture on art and literature, in 1827 published On the Theory and History of the Plastic Arts, and in 1828 issued two volumes of critical writings (Kritische Schriften). In 1823-1830 he published the journal Indische Bibliothek and edited (1823) the Bhagavad Gita

Bhagavad Gita

The ' , also more simply known as Gita, is a 700-verse Hindu scripture that is part of the ancient Sanskrit epic, the Mahabharata, but is frequently treated as a freestanding text, and in particular, as an Upanishad in its own right, one of the several books that constitute general Vedic tradition...

 with a Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

 translation, and (1829) the Ramayana. This was followed by his 1932 work Reflections on the Study of the Asiatic Languages.

After the death of Madame de Staël, Schlegel married (1818) a daughter of Professor Paulus of Heidelberg

Heidelberg

-Early history:Between 600,000 and 200,000 years ago, "Heidelberg Man" died at nearby Mauer. His jaw bone was discovered in 1907; with scientific dating, his remains were determined to be the earliest evidence of human life in Europe. In the 5th century BC, a Celtic fortress of refuge and place of...

, but this union was dissolved in 1821.

In 1835, Schlegel became head of the committee organising a monument to Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...

 in Bonn

Bonn

Bonn is the 19th largest city in Germany. Located in the Cologne/Bonn Region, about 25 kilometres south of Cologne on the river Rhine in the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, it was the capital of West Germany from 1949 to 1990 and the official seat of government of united Germany from 1990 to 1999....

. He died in Bonn in 1845, three months before the official unveiling of the Beethoven Monument

Beethoven Monument, Bonn

The Beethoven Monument is a large bronze statue of Ludwig van Beethoven that stands on the Münsterplatz in Bonn, Beethoven's birthplace. It was unveiled on 12 August 1845, in honour of the 75th anniversary of the composer's birth.-Background:...

.

Evaluations

In the opinion of the anonymous author of the Schlegel article in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica:
Traugott Böhme, in his article for the 1920 Encyclopedia Americana

Encyclopedia Americana

Encyclopedia Americana is one of the largest general encyclopedias in the English language. Following the acquisition of Grolier in 2000, the encyclopedia has been produced by Scholastic....

, gives the following thoughts:
The 1905 New International Encyclopedia

New International Encyclopedia

The New International Encyclopedia was an American encyclopedia first published in 1902 by Dodd, Mead and Company. It descended from the International Cyclopaedia and was updated in 1906, 1914 and 1926.-History:...

, in its article on Schlegel, gives the following opinions:

Selected works

• Ion (1803)
• Poetische Werke (1811)
• Bhagavad Gita
  Bhagavad Gita
  The ' , also more simply known as Gita, is a 700-verse Hindu scripture that is part of the ancient Sanskrit epic, the Mahabharata, but is frequently treated as a freestanding text, and in particular, as an Upanishad in its own right, one of the several books that constitute general Vedic tradition...
  
   (1823, Latin translation)
• Kritische Schriften (1828, critical works)
• Sämtliche Werke (1846–1848)
• Œuvres écrites en français (3 vols., 1846)
• Opuscula Latine scripta (1848)

In 1846-1847 Schlegel's Sämtliche Werke (Collected Works) were issued in twelve volumes by E. Bocking. Schlegel's Shakespeare translations have been often reprinted; the edition of 1871-1872 was revised with Schlegel's manuscripts by Michael Bernays

Michael Bernays

Michael Bernays was born in Hamburg. He studied first law and then literature at Bonn and Heidelberg.He obtained a considerable reputation by his lectures on Shakespeare at Leipzig and an explanatory text to Beethoven's music to Egmont...

. See Bernays's Zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Schlegelschen Shakespeare (1872); Rudolph Genée, Schlegel und Shakespeare (1903). Schlegel's Berlin lectures of 1801/1804 were reprinted from manuscript notes by Jakob Minor (1884).

A selection of the writings of both August Wilhelm and Friedrich Schlegel, edited by Oskar Walzel, will be found in Kürschner

Joseph Kürschner

Joseph Kürschner was a German author and editor most often cited for his critical edition of classics from German literature.-Biography:...

's Deutsche Nationalliteratur, 143 (1892).

Portraits

• Portrait of A W Schlegel by Albert Gregorius (1774–1853), 1817, in the Castle of Coppet
  Coppet
  Coppet is a municipality in the district of Nyon in the canton of Vaud in Switzerland.-History:Coppet is first mentioned in 1294 as Copetum. In 1347 it was mentioned as Copet.-Geography:...
  
   (Switzerland)

Further reading

• Rudolf Haym
  Rudolf Haym
  Rudolf Haym was a German philosopher.He was born in Grünberg in Silesia , and died in St. Anton . He studied philosophy and theology at Halle and Berlin....
  
  , Romantische Schule (1870; new ed., 1914)
• Strauss, D. Fr., Kleine Schriften (1862)
• Huch, Ricarda, ‘Blütezeit der Romantik (1899)
• Caroline, Briefe aus der Frühromantik (ed. by Erich Schmidt, 2 vols., 1913)
• Sidgwick, Mrs. Alfred, Caroline Schlegel and her Friends (1889)
• Bernays, M., Zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Schlegelschen Shakespeare (1872)
• Genée, R., A. W. Schlegel und Shakespeare (1903)
• Gundolf, F, Shakespeare und der deutsche Geist (1911)
• Helmholtz, A. A., The Indebtedness of S. T. Coleridge to A. W. Schlegel (1907)

External links

• Phelan, Anna Augusta von Helmholtz, 1907
• Francke, Kuno, Howard, William Guild, Schiller, Friedrich, 1913-1914
• Translating Shakespeare - process and problems of translating the works of William Shakespeare, done by Schlegel