Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel - Biography

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel was born March 10, 1772 in Hanover and died January 12, 1829 in Dresden. He was a writer, literary critic, historian and one of the key figures of German Romanticism.

Born the youngest of five children (among them August Wilhelm Schlegel), Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel grew up in a wealthy and influential family. After studying law at the universities of Göttingen and Leipzig, Schlegel’s interests soon turned to philology and the classics. Therefore, in 1794 he moved to Dresden, where he immersed himself in the study of literature and the classics.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel began his career as a writer and devoted himself to ancient literature and poetry. Considering Greek philosophy and culture an indispensable part of education, Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel also took the view that Greek art and literature, given their intrinsic relation to nature, should serve as a model for their modern counterparts.

Among Schlegel’s early, classicist publications are, Über das Studium der griechischen Poesie (On the Study of Greek Poetry, written in 1795 and published two years later), Die Griechen und Römer (The Greeks and Romans, 1797) and Geschichte der Poesie der Griechen und Römer (The History of the Poetry of the Greeks and Romans, 1798).

The year 1796 marks an important time for Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel as he joined his older brother in Jena, and began his engagement with Romanticism. Between 1798 and 1800, the Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel brothers edited the quarterly Athenaeum. The journal was intended to disseminate the thoughts and theories of the Romantic movement. Schlegel’s most important contribution to the journal was his Gespräch über die Poesie (Dialogue on Poetry, 1800), which was essentially an elaborated essay on romantic theory. Among the contributors were Novalis and Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher, both of whom Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel had met during a three-year residence in Berlin. Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel also worked with Schleiermacher beginning translations of Plato's dialogues.

As insinuated above, Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel regards Greek poetry to be superior to modern poetry. Yet, in the course of his further distinction between the classic and the romantic, he clearly advocates for the latter. Probably the first one to use the term “romantisch” in a literarily context, for Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel all poetry should be romantic, as only romantic poetry can be seen as “real” literature. Though never presented systematically, one of Schlegel’s central theories is that of a “progressive universal poetry” (progressive Universalpoesie). Next to many other essays and fragments, he further elaborates on it in his most famous Athenaeumsfragment (number 116), where he determines the purpose of romantic poetry, namely a fusion of poetry and prose. Such poetry, then, should not only aim to re-unite the various genres of poetry, but also re-establish contact with philosophy. Covering “everything that is poetic,” Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel felt that romantic poetry should be at once philosophical and mythological, as well as mystic, as he writes: “A certain mysticism of expression, which, joined with romantic fantasy and grammatical understanding, can be something very charming and good.”

As with the Romantics in general, Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel favors the literary form of the fragment. Incomplete and eternally becoming, the fragment is not only capable of uniting genres and disciplines, but also possesses a reality in itself. In this context, Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel develops the notion of “romantic irony” which, closely related to the fragment, represents a synthesis of infinite allegory and the appearance of fantasy, fragmentary wit. Irony for Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel “is a form of paradox”; paradox, in turn, is “what is good and great at the same time.”

Situated between the real and ideal, he regards philosophy as “the true home of irony, which might be defined as logical beauty.” According to Schlegel, all philosophers should “produce or postulate” irony. And as the epic poem, philosophy as a whole must begin in the middle, as the absolute cannot be obtained, there is no true beginning or foundational principle. Following, and anticipating Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel claims that there are no straight lines, but only circles.

In 1800 Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel was appointed lecturer at the University of Jena, where he taught transcendental philosophy. In this time, the “Jena circle” dissolved, in part due to the early death of Novalis in 1801. As a result, Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel decided to move to Paris. There he founded a new journal, Europa, and began to devote himself to comparative studies of Sanskrit and Indian philosophy, through which he hoped to find God.

Soon after Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel moved to Cologne, in 1804, to lecture on the developments of philosophy. In the same year he married the novelist Dorothea Brendel Mendelssohn, the daughter of Moses Mendelssohn. While he continued with his Oriental studies, Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel also published his Poetisches Tagebuch (Poetical Diary, 1805/6), which was soon followed by another work of poetry, Gedichte (Poems, 1809).

The results of his Oriental studies were eventually published under the title, Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier (On the Language and Wisdom of the Indians, 1808). Comparing Indo-European languages with Sanskrit, the work can be seen as the beginning of comparative linguistics and considered as the first Western analysis of Indian cultures and religions. Soon, however, he discarded his studies in this field and, together with his wife Dorothea, converted to Catholicism within the same year. In doing so, his political convictions underwent a radical change. Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel went from being a Romantic to a Catholic of the right wing. This transformation led to a break in his relationship with his brother.

Soon after his conversion, Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel began a politic career at the imperial court in Vienna. A fierce enemy of Napoleon, he joined Charles, the archduke, in going to war and, in 1815, was appointed secretary of the Austrian delegation to the Diet of Frankfurt, where he stayed for three years.

In addition to his political ambitions, Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel continued to work as a lecturer of history and literature, thereby focusing on the patriotic impact and function of history. “The historian is a prophet in reverse,” as he had stated in the Athenaeum. His courses Über die neuere Geschichte (A Course of Lectures on Modern History) and Geschichte der alten und neueren Literatur (Lectures on the History of Literature) were published in 1811 and 1815.

After his return from Frankfurt, Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel founded and co-edited the extremely conservative Catholic magazine Concordia. His Signatur des Zeitalters (Signature of the Age, 1820) sharply criticizes the parliamentary system and advocates for a Christian state dominated by a strong monarch. During this time, Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel also prepared his Sämtliche Werke (Collected works), appearing between 1822 and 1825 in ten volumes.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel spent his last years teaching the philosophy of life as well as the philosophy of history. In 1828, he went to Dresden to lecture on the philosophy of language, where he died a few months later.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel was mainly influenced mainly by such prominent figures as Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher, Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Leibniz. Until most recently, his own philosophical work was mostly ignored by philosophers. It is often stated that Schlegel’s most significant contributions are to be found among his literary studies rather than his theoretical or poetic oeuvre. Other works, such as his unfinished, experimental romance Lucinde (1799) or the tragedy Alarcos (1802) were not granted success. The former, however, had caused a scandal because of its sexual explicitness; it is based on his affair with Dorothea, which had begun in Berlin.

A most productive writer throughout his life, Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel composed numerous essays of books. Among his most important are: Über die Grenzen des Schönen (1794), Vom ästhetischen Werte der griechischen Komödie (1794), Versuch über den Begriff des Republikanismus (1796/7), Georg Forster (1797), Über Lessing (1797), Kritische Fragmente (Lyceums-Fragmente, 1797), Fragmente (Athenaeums-Fragmente, 1798-1800), Über die Philosophie. An Dorothea (1799), Über die Unverständlichkeit (1800), Ideen (1800), Charakteristiken und Kritiken (1801), Transcendentalphilosophie (1801) and Von der Seele (1820).