August Wilhelm Schlegel

August Wilhelm Schlegel. A seminal figure of German Romanticism, he was a critic, translator, poet, and pioneering scholar of comparative literature. His influential translations of Shakespeare fundamentally shaped German literary culture, while his critical theories, developed alongside his brother Friedrich Schlegel, formed the core of Jena Romanticism. Later in life, he became a prominent professor of Indology at the University of Bonn, helping to establish the study of Sanskrit in Europe.

Biography

Born in Hanover, he was the son of the Lutheran pastor Johann Adolf Schlegel. He studied theology and philology at the University of Göttingen under the classicist Christian Gottlob Heyne. In 1791, he moved to Amsterdam as a tutor before returning to Jena in 1796, where he joined the vibrant intellectual circle that included Novalis, Ludwig Tieck, and the philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling. His marriage to the brilliant intellectual Caroline Böhmer in 1796 placed him at the center of Early Romanticism. From 1801 to 1804, he lectured in Berlin, delivering his famous *Vorlesungen über schöne Literatur und Kunst*. During the Napoleonic Wars, he served as a secretary and cultural propagandist for the Crown Prince of Sweden and later joined the court of Madame de Staël at Coppet Castle in Switzerland, traveling with her across Europe. In 1818, he was appointed to the first professorship of Indology in Germany at the University of Bonn, where he remained until his death, building a significant collection of Sanskrit manuscripts.

Literary and critical work

With his brother Friedrich Schlegel, he founded the critical journal *Athenaeum*, the chief organ of the Jena Romantics. His critical essays promoted Romantic irony and the organic unity of the artwork, sharply distinguishing between "classical" and "romantic" literature. His most systematic work, the Vienna lectures published as Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature, offered a sweeping history of world drama and championed Shakespeare and the Spanish Golden Age playwrights like Calderón as Romantic ideals. He applied his theories to diverse fields, later publishing influential works on the Nibelungenlied and the *Bhagavad Gita*, bridging European and Indian literature.

Translations

His translations are considered his most enduring practical achievement. His monumental, poetically sensitive renderings of seventeen plays by Shakespeare, created between 1797 and 1810, became the standard German version, profoundly influencing writers from Heinrich von Kleist to Georg Büchner. He also translated works from Italian literature, including Dante's Divine Comedy, and from Spanish literature, notably five plays by Calderón. These projects were guided by his theoretical aim to preserve the foreign spirit while mastering it in German form, a practice he termed "productive reception."

Influence and legacy

His Shakespeare translations effectively made the English playwright a canonical German author, impacting the stage and literary imagination for generations. As a critic, his formulation of the classical-romantic dichotomy became a foundational concept for 19th-century literary historiography. His pioneering lectures at Bonn established Indology as an academic discipline in Germany, inspiring subsequent scholars like Friedrich Max Müller. Through his association with Madame de Staël, his ideas on Romanticism were disseminated across Europe, notably influencing French literary thought as recorded in her De l'Allemagne.

Selected works

* *Gedichte* (Poems, 1800) * *Spanisches Theater* (Spanish Theater, 2 vols., 1803–1809) – Translations of Calderón * *Blumensträuße italienischer, spanischer und portugiesischer Poesie* (1804) * *Über dramatische Kunst und Literatur* (Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature, 1809–1811) * *Observations sur la langue et la littérature provençales* (1818) * *Indische Bibliothek* (Indian Library, 1820–1830) * *Reflexions sur l'étude des langues asiatiques* (1832) * *Essais littéraires et historiques* (1842)

Category:1767 births Category:1845 deaths Category:German Romantic poets Category:German literary critics Category:German translators Category:Shakespearean translators Category:Indologists Category:University of Bonn faculty Category:People from Hanover