SCHLEIERMACHER, FRIEDRICH DANIEL ERNST German theologian and philosopher, was the son of a Prussian army chaplain of the Reformed confession, and was born on Nov. 21, 5768 at Breslau. He was educated in a Moravian school at Niesky in upper Lusatia, and at the Moravian seminary at Barby near Halle. Reluctantly his father permitted him to enter the university of Halle, which had already (1787) abandoned pietism and adopted the rationalist spirit of Wolf and Semler (see RATIONALISM). But though Schleiermacher left the Mora vians he retained their intense religious spirit, and the years spent in their schools affected the whole course of his development. In his own life he reconciled personal emotional religion with a modi fied adoption of the Kantian critical philosophy. In 1796 he be came chaplain to the Charite Hospital in Berlin. He was at that time profoundly affected by German Romanticism, as represented by his friend Friedrich Schlegel. This is evidenced by his Con fidential Letters on Schlegel's Lucinde (Vertraute Briefe fiber Schlegel's "Lsecinde," 1801, ed. 1835; by Jonas Frankel, 1907; R. Frank, 1907), as well as by his relation to Eleonore Grunow, the wife of a Berlin clergyman. Meantime he studied Spinoza and Plato, and was profoundly influenced by both, though he was never a Spinozist ; he made Kant more and more his master, though he departed on fundamental points from him, and finally remodelled his philosophy; with some of Jacobi's positions he was in sym pathy, and from Fichte and Schelling he accepted ideas, which in their place in his system, however, received another value and import. Schleiermacher was, in fact, a great eclectic. The literary fruit of this period of intense fermentation was his Reden Uber die Religion (1799; ed. GOttingen, 1906), and his "new year's gift" to the new century, the Monologen (1800; ed. 1902). In the first book he drew a sharp line between religion on the one hand and ethics and knowledge on the other. Religion is a matter of immediate intuition, he argued, whatever its manifestations and the dogmas with which it may be cloaked. In the Monologen he developed his ethical manifesto, in which he proclaimed his ideas as to the freedom and independence of the spirit, and as to the re lation of the mind to the world of sense and imperfect social or ganizations. In these essays he emphasized individual personal development.
From 1802 to 1804, Schleiermacher was pastor in the little Pomeranian town of Stolp. These years were full of literary work. He relieved Friedrich Schlegel entirely of his nominal responsibility for the translation of Plato, which they had together undertaken (vols. 1-5, 1804-1o; 3rd. ed., 1855-61 vol. 6, Repub.
1828; 2nd ed., 1855-62) ; he was also occupied with Grundlinien einer Kritik der bisherigen Sittenlehre (5803 ; 2nd ed. 5834), the of his strictly critical and philosophical productions. In the year 1804 Schleiermacher went as university preacher and profes sor of theology to Halle, where he remained until 1807. There he wrote his dialogue the Weihnachtsfeier (1806; 4th ed. 1850), which stands midway between his Reden and his great dogmatic work, Der christliche Glaube.
After the battle of Jena he returned to Berlin (1807), where he was appointed pastor of the Trinity church. The next year he married the widow of his friend Willich. At the foundation of the Berlin university (181o), he received a theological chair, and shortly afterward became secretary to the Academy of Sciences. Schleiermacher threw himself into the movement for national in dependence, acquiring a name and place in his country's annals with Arndt, Fichte, Stein and Scharnhorst. He shared in the reorganization of the Prussian church, and advocated, unsuccess fully, the union of the Lutheran and Reformed churches. In the Kurze Darstellung des theologischen Stadiums (1811; 2nd ed. 1830), he sought to do for theology what he had done for religion in his Reden. His chief theological work Der christliche Glaube nach den Grundslitzen der evangelischen Kirche (1821-22 ; 2nd ed., greatly altered, 183o-31; 6th ed., 1884) is a classic, and has been described as the greatest theological work produced by Protestantism since the Reformation. Schleiermacher's aim was to reform Protestant theology by means of the fundamental ideas of the Reden, to put an end to the unreason and superficiality of both supernaturalism and rationalism, and to deliver religion and theology from a relation of dependence on perpetually changing systems of philosophy. His claim of the right of the church to frame its own liturgy in opposition to the arbitrary dictation of the state brought upon him fresh troubles. He felt himself more and more isolated in Berlin. But he continued his translation of Plato and prepared a new and greatly altered edition of his Christ liche Glaube, anticipating the latter in two letters to his friend Liicke (in the Studien und Kritiken, 1829), in which he defended his theological position generally and his book in particular. He continued his defence against Hengstenberg's party on the one hand and the rationalists von Colin and D. Schulz on the other, protesting against both subscription to the ancient creeds and the imposition of a new rationalistic formulary. He died, after a few days' illness, on Feb. 12, 1834.