Schlegel, (Karl Wilhelm) Friedrich von 1772-1829
German man of letters and critic

He was born in Hanover, the brother of August von Schlegel. Educated at G�ttingen and Leipzig, in 1798 he eloped with Dorothea (1763-1839), daughter of Moses Mendelssohn and mother of Philipp Veit the religious painter; this experience inspired a notorious romance Lucinde (1799). He then joined his brother at Jena, and with him wrote and edited the literary journal Das Athen�um, a vehicle of the German Romantic movement. He studied oriental languages at Paris (1802-04), and in 1808 published a pioneering work on Sanskrit and Indo-Germanic linguistics, �ber die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier ('On the Language and Wisdom of the Indians'). In 1808 he became a Roman Catholic, and joined the Austrian foreign service, drawing up the Austrian proclamations against Napoleon I in 1809. His best-known books are lectures on the Philosophy of History (Eng trans 1835) and History of Literature (trans 1859). There are also English versions of his Philosophy of Life (1847) and Lectures on Modern History (1849).

Bibliography: E Behler, Friedrich von Schlegel (1966)