SCHLEGEL, FRIEDRICH VON (1772-1829), German poet, critic and scholar, was the younger brother of August Wil helm von Schlegel. He was born at Hanover on March io, 1772. He studied law at Gottingen and Leipzig, but ultimately devoted himself entirely to literary studies. He published in 1797 the im portant book Die Griechen und Romer, which was followed by the suggestive Geschichte der Poesie der Griechen und Romer (1798). Goethe and Schiller looked to the Greeks for form and objectiv ity; Schlegel's hellenism was romantic and lyrical. At Jena, where he lectured as a Privatdozent at the university, he contributed to the Atheniium the aphorisms and essays in which the principles of the Romantic school are most definitely stated. This journal formed the centre for the first group of romanticists at Jena. Here also he wrote Lucinde ( 1799 ) , an unfinished romance, which is in teresting as an attempt to transfer to practical ethics the Roman tic demand for complete individual freedom, and Alarcos, a tragedy (1802) in which, without much success, he combined romantic and classical elements. In 1802 he went to Paris, where he edited the review Europa (1803), lectured on philosophy and carried on oriental studies, some results of which he embodied in Uber die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier (1808).
In the same year in which this work appeared, he and his wife Dorothea (1763-1839), a daughter of Moses Mendelssohn, joined the Roman Catholic Church, and from this time he became more and more opposed to the principles of political and religious free dom. In 1809 he was appointed imperial court secretary at the headquarters of the archduke Charles at Vienna ; later he was councillor of legation in the Austrian embassy at the Frankfort diet, but in 1818 he returned to Vienna. Meanwhile he had pub
lished his collected Gedichte (1809) and two series of lectures, Uber die neuere Geschichte (1811) and Geschichte der alten und neuen Literatur (1815). After his return to Vienna from Frank fort he edited Concordia (182o-23), and began the issue of his Seinaliche Werke. He also delivered lectures, which were repub lished in his Philosophie des Lebens (1828) and in his Philosophie der Geschichte (1829). He died on Jan. 11, 1829, at Dresden.
Friedrich Schlegel's wife, Dorothea, was the author of an un finished romance, Florentin (18o1), a Sammlung romantischer Dichtungen des Mittelalters (2 vols., 1804), a version of Lother und Mailer (1805), and a translation of Madame de Stael's Corinne (1807-08)---all of which were issued under her hus band's name.
Friedrich Schlegel's Samtliche Werke appeared in io vols. (1822-25) a 2nd ed. (1846) in 15 vols. His Prosaische Jugendschriften 5802) have been edited by J. Minor (1882, 2nd ed. 1906) ; there are also reprints of Lucinde, and F. Schleiermacher's V ertraute Briefe iiber Lucinde, r800 (1907). See I. Rouge, F. Schlegel et la genese du romantisme allemand (1904) and Erliiuterungen zu F. Schlegels Lucinde (1905) ; M. Joachimi, Die Weltanschauung der Romantik (1905) ; W. Glawe, Die Religion F. Schlegels (1906) ; E. Kircher, Phil osophie der Romantik (1906) ; R. Volpers, Friedrich Schlegel als poli tischer Denker and deutscher Patriot (1917). On Dorothea Schlegel see J. M. Raich, Dorothea von Schlegel and deren Sohne (1881) ; F. Diebel, Dorothea Schlegel als Schriftsteller im Zusammenhang mit der romantischen Schule (1905).