SOURCE: Thalmann, Marianne. “August William von Schlegel.” In August William von Schlegel, pp. 5-30. Bad Godesberg: Inter Nationes, 1967.

[In the following essay, Thalmann details Schlegel's career as an eminent literary critic and scholar in the Europe of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.]

On April 1st, 1804, Madame de Staël¹ wrote to her friend Albertine Necker de Saussure: “In the whole of this Berlin, who is it that has engaged my interest? The famous Prince Louis? No. A few from among those ‘grands seigneurs’ who abound here? No. A professor, a German professor! … If you are thinking of a flirtation, there is no question of that, and the first look at him would convince you …, but if you are looking for more esprit and originality in literature than anybody else has and as much as you have yourself, then I can guarantee it.”²

We may begin the life story of August Wilhelm Schlegel with this eulogy, the like of which has rarely been bestowed on any other professor; his life was the Odyssey of a romantic who remained the restless Ulysses all his life.

Hanover was proud of August Wilhelm, son to Johann Adolf Schlegel, vicar of the Marktkirche, when he, on the occasion of his graduation from the Ratsgymnasium, delivered a speech in perfect hexameters in praise of poetry. Even at the age of eighteen he faced his audience with composure and the air of a man of the world. Behaviour such as this, it is true, was expected from the Schlegels, who had come from Meissen and belonged to the upper-class intellectuals of the city. Ever since the seventeenth century they had been clergimen, civil servants and, occasionally and secretly, poets. The Emperor Ferdinand III had ennobled the family as early as 1651. Johann Elias Schlegel, uncle to August Wilhelm, was a poet of considerable fame. With his “Geschwister in Taurien” (1737) he had created a first German Iphigenia, and in his “Vergleichung Shakespeares und Andreas Gryphs” (on the occasion of a translation of Shakespeare's Julius Cesar) he had touched upon a theme that was to become the obsession of the following generation. August Wilhelm grew up among numerous brothers and sisters. As all precocious youths he devoured “Götz von Berlichingen”, “Otto von Wittelsbach“, “Oberon” and “Ossian”.³

In 1786 he began his studies in Göttingen. Like most serious-minded fathers of his time Schlegel's father wanted him to study theology, a wish which the son fulfilled although, like most sons, he soon abandoned the subject. This generation that originated the unrest in Europe had a tendency towards wordliness and ideas of an artistic priesthood that aimed at setting up new gods, where the old gods were beginning to crumble. The Georgia Augusta University in Göttingen had the name of a university both learned and fashionable. From among the famous scholars connected with it—such as Spittler, Schlözer and Lichtenberg⁴—two gained a decisive influence on Schlegel's development: Christian Gottlob Heyne and Gottfried August Bürger,⁵ the former by his incorruptible correctness as a classical scholar, and the latter by his protest as a poet harrassed to death; the one the preserver, the other the creator of language. From both Schlegel learnt to relish words, rhyme patterns and well measured syllables. He learnt that a word can have a clearly definable content and, at the same time, be a hieroglyph with innumerable meanings.

Heyne asked Schlegel for his co-operation on the word index of his great Vergil edition⁶, Bürger for a translation of Midsummer Night's Dream,—a translation by which the student was to excel his master. Schlegel was so full of energy that he could work on numerous projects at once. Hardly had he spent a year at Göttingen, when he won a prize for his first learned essay on Homer's geography. And as the first item in Bürger's journal Akademie der schönen Rede⁷ we find his essay on Schiller's poem “Die Künstler” (1790). Schlegel here owned a certain admiration for Schiller, for his versification and his “vivid clarity”, without therefore overlooking his occasional jarring rhymes or linguistic inadequacies. With this essay he implicitly opposed the standards of the older generation. It was followed by another on “Dante und die Göttliche Komödie” (1791), which he illustrated by examples from the text. In it he proved his abilities as a historian and translator. He also showed consistency by proceeding from the Vergil studies of Heyne to Dante who had, after thirteen hundred years, revived the idea of Vergil as the “altissimus poeta”. For Schlegel modern literature began with Dante. This was significant and new. The detailed assessment of his importance remained for the later romantics. Without lingering over the literature of classical antiquity Schlegel took up European developments, proceeded from Dante to Provençal poets, gave a short survey of Romance poetry and marked as unforgettable poets then long forgotten. The first text editions of the Troubadours had not yet appeared, and it was to take another twenty years before the Romance scholar Friedrich Diez wrote systematically on the subject. It was Schlegel's romantic openness to the world that succeeded in establishing a link between the Middle Ages and modern times. He began his essay with an idea already used by Wackenroder⁸ and later familiar to all romantics after him: “Not to judge is my desire,” but to promote understanding; to call to life, to give a name; not to judge, but to interpret, these were the slogans of the first romantic generation.

In 1791 Schlegel accepted the post of a tutor in the house of Henry Muilman, a wealthy alderman in Amsterdam. His hope for a further leap to England was not fulfilled, but the crossing of the German boundaries at least satisfied his general susceptibility to anything foreign. All romantics around Schlegel were attracted by things remote, instead of feeling exclusively attached to some tiny princely court, some pavilion in a garden or a path along a river. It was places like Paris, London, Vienna, Berlin and Rome with their element of protest and rebellion that caught their imagination. Friedrich Schlegel⁹ went to Paris, his brother Karl August died in Madras as an officer in British service. Alexander von Humboldt felt himself drawn to the West Indies, Chamisso travelled around the world, and Tieck¹⁰ escaped from himself and his time to Italy. The Napoleonic wars shifted people from one scene to another, and educational tours within Germany made for closer ties between the North and the South, whose separation was to the romantics, in August Wilhelm's words, “an outrage”. They no longer went to Paris with the attitude of a rationalist cavalier, whose sole aim was to get to know the mondain world. They went with a mind sensitive to the spiritual unity of the Western World. The romantics felt at home only in Europe as a whole, and past and future for them were one. They found themselves continuously on the way from the attainable to the unattainable.

In Amsterdam Schlegel lived in a family with an interest not in literature but in politics and economy; here it was profit and loss that mattered. On June 11th, 1791, Schlegel wrote to Bürger: “I could tell you a lot, but today I shall only say one thing … namely that I eat and drink well. Why don't you admit that your Göttingen is a miserable little place where you go to lectures and eat pig swill?” There was a lack of books, but an abundance of plaice, salmon, crabs, shrimps and turtle patty, things that made his mother fear for her son's soul.

In Amsterdam Schlegel cultivated his knowledge of foreign languages in the company of Englishmen and Frenchmen, he learnt to master Dutch, and translated from the Dutch J. Rendorp's “Nachrichten zur Aufklärung der Vorfälle während des letzten Krieges zwischen England und Holland”, in connection with which he preferred not to be mentioned. In Germany he was meanwhile acquiring a name as a translator. Schiller, not only because he felt flattered by Schlegel's review of his poem, acknowledged in him a man of undaunted judgement and unusual insight, whose co-operation he would have liked to secure for his journal¹¹. Schiller was conscious of the fact that this new abstract reasoning might not be to everybody's taste, but his journal was in need of an element of wit in order to survive. In his desire to get in touch with Schlegel who then lived in Holland, he asked the assistance of Körner, Humboldt and Friedrich Schlegel. He offered five louis'd'or a sheet for the publication of the enlarged essay on Dante in the Horen, a sum nobody else had been prepared to pay. He advised Schlegel to take up residence in Jena, suggesting social contact and promising a professorship. Schlegel, however, took his time. Schiller's shattering criticism of Bürger had disappointed him, and his brother Friedrich's scepticism concerning the journal made him hesitate, despite the fact that Goethe, Herder, Kant and Jacobi¹² were among the contributors. It was only after Bürger's death in 1794 that the project began to take shape. In July 1796 Schlegel arrived in Jena, accompanied by his young wife Caroline Michaelis, daughter of the professor for Oriental studies in Göttingen, of whom it was known that she had in the past compromised herself privately as well as politically. She consequent easily succeeded in upsetting a small university town such as Jena. Schlegel, on the other hand, did not come empty-handed. A translation of Romeo and Juliet was in the making, and on March 1st, 1796, a sample of it had been sent to Schiller from Brunswig. Bürger's attempt to translate A Midsummer Night's Dream had with Schlegel grown into the plan to translate all Shakespearian plays, a plan in which Caroline took great interest.

August Wilhelm Schlegel was an indefatigable worker and lacked almost any need for leisure. In his publications in the Horen he quickly developed his critical principles. Thus, in his second contribution, the witty and elegant letters “Über Poesie, Silbenmaß und Sprache” (1795), he proved himself to be not only a skilful philologist but also a master of aesthetical theory: The poet, he maintained, has a workshop; a poem is made; even the most beautiful of poems “consists of nothing but verse, the verse of words, the words of syllables, the syllables of various sounds.” A poem is something that is measured, balanced out and, lastly, constructed. Here he touched on problems that still concern us today. “In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou make thy verse.” This renunciation of the emotional element of inspiration in favour of the idea that a poem is an artifact was a provocation. Thus the romantics had a decisive influence on the process of making home-made poetry less attractive, so that the average citizen could no longer consider the poet's work a useful occupation during his spare time. A line was beginning to be drawn between form and content. This process was in the air, and it was of importance for many of the romantic works, such as Wackenroder's “Herzensergießungen eines kunstliebenden Klosterbruders”, Tieck's “Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen”, and Novalis' “Die Lehrlinge zu Sais”.¹³ It was Schlegel who provided the theoretical foundation for their writing. His essay “Betrachtungen über Metrik”, which was published only posthumously, showed to what extent he had, even at that time, occupied himself with the problem of language, the poet's material. Schlegel appealed to man's sense of hearing. The comparison between languages required for him not only a knowledge of languages, but also “the greatest subtlety and impartiality of hearing.” From this idea he proceeded to very modern theories concerning vowels and consonants, the “expressive” and the “pictorial” elements in a language that characterize a nation's spirit. He worked on problems like those of synaesthesia and of the scales of sounds and colours in vowels, problems that were to occupy the whole of the nineteenth century.

From the problem of words Schlegel turned to that of sentence-rhythm. In “Etwas über William Shakespeare bei Gelegenheit von Wilhelm Meister” he pointed out that French tragedies were dramas as they should not be written. For him the special problem was Shakespeare. He, therefore, began with a criticism of Goethe's Hamlet interpretation. For the classical writers Hamlet was a weak hero, unable to perform a great deed. In the eyes of the younger generation, however, he was an intellectual hero, suffering under his lot as an individualist, deprived of masque and cothurnus. Theirs was a different Shakespeare: no longer the nature boy with degenerate manners, as the eighteenth century still saw him, but an artist—“a gulf of deliberateness, self-consciousness and reflexion”, as Schlegel expressed it.

This view of Shakespeare also determined Schlegel's notion of the aim of translation. The reader has the right to get his poet “exactly as he is, just as the lover will love his beloved warts and all”. Verse must be rendered as verse; a translation of verse into prose is a barbarism. What we need is a poetical Shakespeare. Thus the next edition of Horen brought a treatise on the sources and structure of Romeo and Juliet, and in Reichhardt's journal Deutschland¹⁴ there appeared samples of a verse translation. Translating became an activity almost as sacred as the writing of poetry. It was a path from sounds to words and from words to texts, and these texts were the first step towards the “world reality” of European cultures. Never before had Shakespeare been discussed in this way. Schlegel's essays were followed by his translation of seventeen Shakespearian plays, the publication of which began in 1797 by Unger in Berlin and was interrupted in 1801 by a quarrel with the publisher. Of course, this was not the first German translation of Shakespeare. Wieland had produced twelve volumes, seeing himself as the “revising mediator”, and the slim volumes of the Eschenburg edition¹⁵ have passed through many German schoolboys' hands. It was the merit of this new romantic edition that, in addition to the great tragedies, the comedies and the romances were discovered for the German stage. There was also a change in the understanding of the tragedies: the famous actor Schröder had altered the ending of Hamlet when he brought it onto the Hamburg stage in 1776. He wanted the hero to stay alive and to ascend the throne, thus achieving a victory of good over evil. After all, the audience demanded satisfaction of their moral sense too, once they had paid for their tickets. After 1800 Schiller had pieced together a performance of Macbeth for the Weimar stage by taking bits from both the texts by Eschenburg and Wieland, simplifying the scenes and replacing verse by prose. With the romantics all this began to change. Instead of adapting translations to the likings of the audiences of Vienna, Weimar or Hamburg, Schlegel and his contemporaries advocated extreme modesty on the part of the actor whose sole aim was to interpret the author's words. Not even Goethe had gone so far in his work as a stage director.

Meanwhile Schlegel had to provide for a family. He read, wrote and reviewed, as he himself admitted, whether standing or walking, awake or in bed, and even when travelling. The value of his reviews for the Allgemeine Literaturzeitung,¹⁶ amounting to about three hundred in number, lay in shifting emphasis and re-appraisal. Here we find Schlegel's shattering criticism of Voss' Homer, of Kotzebue's and Iffland's mediocre productions,¹⁷ his attacks on Karl August Böttiger, the Weimar prophet of good taste, and on Nicolai, the Berlin broker for wholesome literature; side by side with these there were the advertisements for Schiller's Horen, Wackenroder's “Herzensergießungen” and Tieck's “Gestiefelter Kater”, and, of lasting importance, Schlegel's essay on “Hermann und Dorothea”; the latter grew into a longer study and is remarkable for its appreciation of Goethe as one of the great figures in world literature, at the side of Dante, Shakespeare and Cervantes.

When the Prince von Schwarzenburg conferred onto Schlegel the title of Councillor and the city of Jena granted him a professorship for aesthetics, Schlegel had reached a considerable position in society. He taught as a colleague of Fichte and Schelling¹⁸, who, in their turn, had unusual things to say. In his house, painters and carpenters were busy. For Schlegel, as Caroline affirmed, was none of those scholars “with no sense of order and fashion.” She wrote with some uneasiness about the high costs of living and continued: at dinner we often have Paulus, Hufeland, Loder¹⁹ and Schelling, “a proper bear who speaks in a Swabian dialect”. The Schlegels had tea at the Schillers', met Frau von Kalb, and had “delicious apple cakes” at Madame Schütz's,²⁰ where people talked of nothing but the theatre. In co-operation with Iffland a performance of Hamlet in Schlegel's translation was being planned. The Schlegels met Fichte at the Club, visited Weimar, went to the theatre and to the French Comédie and lost their hearts to Herder's²¹ Courland accent. At Herder's place they were introduced to Wieland who, with a certain reserve, called the two Schlegels “the wanton children of the gods”, and Goethe personally helped his guests to food at intimate dinners. “Jena seems to me an extremely learned, yet jolly pub,” Caroline communicated to her friend Luise Gotter.

Thus at this time of concentrated work, firm conviction and devotion to criticism, the political revolution in France was carried on in Germany in the form of an intellectual one. The Horen as well as romantic journalism prove that not all decisions in the history of the middle-classes have been of a political or economic nature. Friedrich Schlegel, a thorough thinker of inexhaustible wit, had come from Dresden and had become the devil's advocate of the Jena group. Tieck read to large audiences with the charm of a man of the world and abounding with burlesque ideas. He and the Schlegels laughed until they found themselves under the table, and Tieck's Malchen²² went asleep when parties continued into the night. Men like the sculptor Friedrich Tieck²³ in his rough buffalo coat, and the Norwegian Henrik Steffens²⁴ dropped in on their parties, and young Novalis²⁵ was often of the company.

They all, including Caroline, translated: Plato, Euripides, Ariosto, Tasso, Cervantes. Translating meant for them the expansion of literature into a world power. They all lived closely together in marriages costing little and in liaisons costing a great deal. They did not conform with the bourgeois way of life, and had no intention of binding themselves forever. They were a war generation, living from hand to mouth. They were all constantly involved in lawsuits against publishers and quarrels with university faculties. They said things which convention did not always sanction. Stiff letters, as well as love letters were being exchanged—the latter, when written by Schlegel, only on the best vellum paper. On the other hand, they were conscious of approaching war; they had seen a blitzkrieg, had been pillaged, had fled, and their flight had never offered an escape from their own unrest. Thus Caroline complained, “I am so full with politics that I can hardly bring any of it up.” And on one occasion she declared a little bitterly that “there is not a drop of wine in the house”.

This generation of the days of Napoleon, born around 1770, was an explosive one. They saw frontiers shifted around them and wanted to shift frontiers themselves. There was not much favourable opinion with respect to Schiller. Friedrich Schlegel's ironic review of Schiller's Musenalmanach did away with the last remaining bond between them. The Xenien, the vengeance from Weimar, followed and separated for good the young from the old. August Wilhelm Schlegel's polemics against philistine balderdash was rude and thorough, though never lacking elegance and wit. His intention was to pronounce his criticism in the way Lessing would have done, boldly and wittily. Lessing's comment on spring, uttered before Jacobi's sister—it has turned green so often, I wish, it would turn red just once—had not been the kind of thing the general public accepted without offence. Schlegel, however, often outdid even the Xenien, when attacking men like Böttiger, Nicolai and Wieland. His most shattering criticism was aimed at verse by Matthisson²⁶, Voss and the pastor Schmidt from Werneuchen, who made “Sterne” rhyme with “Gurkenkerne”. Schlegel's polemics appeared simultaneously with Tieck's “Prinz Zerbino”, where the mill of Polikomikus grinds the great until it is small and “comes out quite tasty.” Another indefatigable polemicist against the bourgeois happiness of the enlightened age and the much hackneyed values of the bestsellers was Schleiermacher²⁷. He encouraged Schlegel: “Just be generous: Give Iffland up for Tieck, Herder for Bernhardi, and Schiller for your brother, and I promise you that you are going to get the most divine devilry” (Oct. 5th, 1799). The climax of these devilries of an Aristophanic kind was “Die Ehrenpforte und Triumphbogen für den Theaterpräsidenten von Kotzebue”, which appeared anonymously and without place of publication in 1801 and was read at the Royal Court in Berlin amid roaring laughter. In this Schlegel took his revenge for the “Hyperboräischer Esel”, where Kotzebue had pieced together a figure of sentences taken from the Athenäum and Lucinde. The counterpart to this was written by Fichte and entitled Friedrich Nicolais Leben und sonderbare Meinungen, for which Schlegel provided a sarcastic preface²⁸.

The romantic generation belonged to an eminently critical age, and was itself avant-garde to the bone. In October 1798 Friedrich Schlegel wrote to Caroline: “It seems to me as if modern history were beginning again and as if all men were divided anew into clerical and secular groups. You, Wilhelm, Henriette and Auguste, are children of the world. We, Hardenberg, Dorothea and myself, are members of the clergy.” August Wilhelm Schlegel and his brother Friedrich thought the moment had come for a journal of their own. The Horen was declining, enmities had been declared openly, the time was ripe for productive criticism that was partly to be directed against the corruptness of journalism. They founded the Athenäum, which appeared not in Jena, but in Berlin, and was thus removed from any Weimar influence. It became the critical weapon against the Allgemeine Literaturzeitung that had originally been the organ of classical writers. The two brothers, equipped with great confidence and fighting spirit, undertook to sieve literature and to separate art from non-art. The three volumes of the Athenäum that appeared between 1798 and 1800 became the core of a new theory of literature: the different arts were to be brought closer together. “Perhaps statues will become paintings, paintings poems, poems music.”

The public had been bored by Schiller's Horen and now found the Athenäum obscure. It was by no means a journal to be taken lightly. Its motto was: “What we think to be the truth will never, out of consideration, be expressed only half.” It contained the greatest documents of the time, the critical essays by the Schlegel brothers: the discussions on paintings, based on a taste quite different from that cultivated in Weimar, and the contributions to criticism of the most recent literature, in which August Wilhelm Schlegel continued his discussion of the nature of artistic creation with the intention of bringing a spark of genius into this dry business. Tieck was praised as the poet of poets and was ranked beside Goethe. In his journal Friedrich Schlegel published his essay on Wilhelm Meister and the programmatical piece “Gespräch über die Poesie”. Novalis contributed his “Hymnen an die Nacht” and a great number of fragments. Owing to Goethe's intervention his “Die Christenheit oder Europa” (1799) was not accepted for publication, although it was an essay that might have given the Athenäum the character of a manifesto.

Meanwhile, August Wilhelm Schlegel had, for the moment, exhausted his creative urge. Weimar was finally done for. Even Jena had spent itself. Thus in 1800 the last copy of the Athenäum appeared. After that Tieck went to Dresden, Friedrich Schlegel planned to spend some time in Paris, and Novalis died. Caroline left Schlegel, dissolved her household and followed Schelling to Würzburg. Just like this marriage of two writers, the stormy years of romanticism came to an end without éclat. In 1801 Schlegel went to Berlin which was growing into the new centre of the romantic movement. He became its first historian. At the beginning he was still occupied with translation from the Spanish, for which he found stimulation especially from Tieck. In this his sense of form, language and metaphors found its final satisfaction. The result was Blumensträuße italienischer, spanischer, portugiesischer Poesie (1803), plus a translation of Calderon's dramas and an essay “Über das spanische Theater”. Schiller's Musenalmanach was replaced by an almanac by Schlegel and Tieck (1801), in which once again the Jena circle found itself united.

The great sensation on the stage in 1801 was Schlegel's play Ion, published by Perthes in Hamburg in 1803. This play, which had been inspired by, but not translated from Euripides, was the attempt to deal with a classical subject in a way itself not classical. In this respect, a remark made by someone that it was a counter-part to Goethe's Iphigenie auf Tauris was not without justification. It had been written by a non-Greek and without the desire for a classical solution. Goethe took great care in putting it on the stage, the architect Genelli supplied decorations and costumes, and the Weimar performance on January 2nd, 1802, was a rare success. The Berlin première followed on May 15th, 1803. The fact that the doctor Heinrich Meyer forbade his wife to play a part in which she was supposed to have had an illegitimate child by a god, caused a press scandal, the maliciousness of which left nothing to be desired.

1801, when Schlegel began to give public lectures, saw Napoleon on the Rhine. It was a year of proclamations, military commands and political tirades. Whatever was thought was also made public. Lectures preceded books that might never be published. Schleiermacher wrote his “Reden über Religion” (1799), Friedrich Schlegel held his lectures on philosophy in Paris and Cologne (1804/06), Adam Müller²⁹ talked about “Die Elemente der Staatskunst” (1809), and Fichte delivered his “Reden an die deutsche Nation” (1807), while French troops patrolled the streets of Berlin. What provided a tie between them all was the conviction that thinking meant acting and acting meant war, and war against more than only one side. In Berlin August Wilhelm Schlegel was addressing a city that had produced Schadow and Schinkel³⁰, two men who had enriched the Berlin of Frederick the Great with new forms, common to all Europe, a city that was the home of Tieck, Wackenroder, Schleiermacher and Kleist, that kept its hold over men like Steffens, Chamisso and E. T. A. Hoffmann, and that could claim the patronage of Clausewitz and Humboldt³¹. It was a city with “new frontiers”. Schlegel spoke in an overcrowded lecture-room “Über schöne Literatur und Kunst”, and he never spoke more brilliantly.

He spoke of the literature of a new Europe, or, as he expressed it, in his cosmopolitan and well-chosen terms, of the romantics of the world, of the contrast between the classical and the romantic tastes, each equally admirable in its way. He described classical art as “architectonical”, while modern art was “pictorial”—a definition which, by now, has become generally accepted. Both, he claimed, belong to Western culture in an equal measure. He spoke of the Nibelungen, of the Volksbücher, of the German Middle Ages, and of the Troubadours, whom he regarded as voices speaking to us from an age when Europe was united. He defined the word “romantic” more clearly. Dante, Shakespeare and Cervantes he called the predecessors of the modern age, the link between them being their common consciousness of paradise and hell. He led the Berliners back to Wackenroder and Tieck, the new moderns, that gave a provocative face to an occupied Berlin. In his Berlin lectures he suggested that Indian mythology, history and literature might provide most important clues to the history of mankind. Schlegel spoke of language, meter, puns and rhymes. He explained that translating is not a barely technical activity, but has the function of opening up Europe as an intellectual sphere. He also specified more clearly the plans, suggestions and demands of the young romantics, bringing order into their ideas and using all the elegance of language at his disposal. His words found fertile soil, since among his audience there were people like Friedrich H. von der Hagen, who later became professor in Berlin, Johann Gustav Büsching, who was to teach German in Breslau, and Madame de Staël.

Whenever Schlegel lectured, and he did so twice a week, the room was overcrowded. His speech had none of that fluent chattiness which so often attracts large audiences. But Berlin heard in him its best speaker and, moreover, a scholar with polished manners. Schlegel lived by no means a solitary life since Caroline had left him³². In her letters to him she teased him on account of Frau van Nuys, whom she had never liked, and asked him whether he really thought of marrying Friederike Unzelmann, the universally adored actress. At one time she bade him to induce one of his elegant friends to select “a printed muslin of the newest fashion” for her friend Luise Gotter. At that time he was staying with August Bernhardi, whose wife, Tieck's sister Sophie, was hardly in her element as a school-master's wife. Soon Schlegel was deeply drawn into her life of unrest and flirtation. He always attracted women, but was unable to keep his hold over them. Thus in a postscript to a letter written in summer 1803 a Herr von Knorring is mentioned as an obvious suitor of Sophie's.

Schlegel was thirty-seven when he met Madame de Staël, the famous authoress of Delphine and Corinne. She was then looking for an adviser and helper concerning her book about Germany, as well as for a tutor for her children. Goethe had advised her to go and see Schlegel in Berlin, and she had followed his advice, although the journey was rather awkward. But she longed to see the man who was then the great master of ceremonies on the literary stage. She was not entirely without connections in Germany. The Düsseldorf philosopher Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi was devoted to her and Goethe had translated her “Essai sur les fictions” and consequently published it in the fifth volume of the Horen.³³ The term “romantic” was, however, still unknown to her. In Schlegel's person she found herself confronted with the younger literary generation of whom she had heard. It was only in Berlin that she got in touch with this most recent branch of literature. With the insatiability of the globe-trotter she then got to know them all, from Fichte to Kotzebue. Germany was to her a riddle that she wanted to solve, and she herself called it “a new light” that now dawned upon her. Schlegel, who was inconsolable about the loss of Sophie, and, yet, so soon consoled, became a tutor for the second time and accompanied Madame de Staël to her country seat Coppet on the Lake of Geneva. Thus he was, once again, the gallant comforter of a weeping woman who had lost all composure on the occasion of her father's death.

In the same year he wrote a long letter to Sophie about his stay with Mme de Staël. The house, he said, was spacious and comfortable, and commanded a view of the lake. He had a servant at his disposal and led a life of leisure. He had reserved for himself an hour for breakfast undisturbed by the family. Life at Coppet was full of letters from room to room, discussions of literary questions, controversies carried on all night and human relations dramatized. People implored on their knees and threatened with tears, although, as Schiller observed, they were heartless and, one is inclined to say, uncomfortable. Mme de Staël was a masterly instigator of scenes that drove her friend Benjamin Constant³⁴ away and that annoyed Schlegel. And yet, in October 1805, he wrote to her, very much like Constant had done after her attempted suicide³⁵: “Just dispose of my person and life, command or forbid—I shall obey you in everything.” The time at Coppet was not among Schlegel's happiest days.

During the last days of September Friedrich Schlegel came on a visit, and everybody was happy to see the back of this ironical person. In 1804 a tour through Italy was undertaken that led them to Turin, Milan, Parma, Rome, Naples and Venice. Schlegel was not the best of companions. Thus Mme de Staël was annoyed at the fact that she was supposed to see the highest perfection of human spirit in a torso or that a lion hewn out of porphyry and placed at the foot of the Capitol was to express divine goodness. Schlegel was not allowed more than four such paradoxes a day, the fifth inevitably bringing about quarrel. Their tour of Switzerland was meant as a kind of return to nature for which Schlegel was hardly the man. Coppet, this centre of European culture, was never quiet or without guests; it was always in a state which Schlegel called “its noisy solitude”. Among the visitors were such men as the red-haired Benjamin Constant, the Geneva historian Sismondi, General de Montmorency, Count Moritz O'Donell, Pestalozzi, Herr von Bonstetten and Prince August of Prussia accompanied by von Clausewitz. Among them Schlegel in his polemic way was paradoxically modern. But he never felt at home, and he almost made up his mind to leave Coppet, although he no longer took things as easy as before.

In 1805/06 Coppet was the scene of theatrical enterprise. Rehearsals were held of Mme de Staël's Agar dans le désert, La Harpe's Philoctètes, Voltaire's Mérope and Racine's Phèdre. They took their parts very seriously, which led to touching scenes and heated dialogues. Schlegel, by no means a born actor, did not fit into his surroundings. He completely lacked the voice and the talent to act a part, gifts that his friend Tieck had to such perfection. Schlegel remained a translator, a stage director, who could himself act nothing but minor parts. In the “Berlinischer Damenkalender” (1807) he reported at length on the play-acting at Coppet and Mme de Staël's performing of tragic parts. The acting of Phèdre provided him with material for the militant essay “Comparaison des deux Phèdres” that became the polemical opening for his Vienna lectures. With the means of comparative literature he renewed the attack on French classicism, which was acknowledged as the arbiter of good taste by an enlightened Europe. And his criticism was far from being watered down, just as at Coppet he alone never had his wine watered down and always considered strong beer, wine and liqueur a healthy diet. This famous French brochure appeared in Paris in 1807. As a piece of heresy it was ill-received by the Napoleonic government, and the blame was put onto Mme de Staël.

In June 1807 plans were made to spend the following winter in Vienna. The tour took them via Munich, where they saw Jacobi, Schelling and Caroline, just as they had seen Tieck and Sophie in Rome. Thus their paths kept crossing one another, and the days of their youth spent together were not forgotten. Mme de Staël was highly satisfied with her stay in Vienna, which presented itself unusually splendid. A ball at court was followed by a grand opera in the Theater auf der Wieden, and the day after by a redoute parée. Invitations came from the English and French ambassadors. Schlegel took up literary relations to Caroline Pichler, to Friedrich von Gentz, the leader of the anti-French propaganda, and to Johann Heinrich von Collin³⁶, the translator of Schlegel's “Comparaison des deux Phèdres” into German. The Emperor received him in special audience and granted him permission to give public lectures.

Thus, in 1808, August Wilhelm Schlegel faced an audience of the highest social circles in Vienna, dressed after the newest fashion in a silver-grey frock-coat, paille trousers, fine shoes and an extraordinarily high necktie. At that time neither Friedrich Schlegel's paradoxical essays nor Novalis' fragments had been read outside Germany. It was the merit of August Wilhelm Schlegel's lectures Über dramatische Kunst und Literatur to have made this Vienna public familiar with the seemingly too sophisticated new German theories. While in his Berlin lectures Schlegel still frequently improvised his ideas on world literature, he now presented a systematic picture of the great mass of romantic ideas. He returned to these thoughts in his essay on Racine's “Phèdre” and united the loose threads of romantic criticism to form a coherent pattern. He broke with the ideas of the classical dictatorship and ranked the manierists—Shakespeare, Cervantes and Calderon—at the side of the classics from Sophocles to Goethe. By thus declaring the standards of valuation to be relative, he explained the origin of European literature from the existence of both traditions and thus abolished the custom of cutting up the whole into different periods and different national segments. What was new in his approach was his turning with equal admiration to the art of the Middle Ages, to Elizabethan drama, manieristic art, to India and to Egypt. Schlegel aimed at a mutual elucidation and did not limit his range of vision to one land and one author. “The person of the author is accidental, the style of a time, however, is essentially necessary.” Art criticism can, therefore, only proceed historically. Schlegel compared architecture, literature and music, and emphasized that art, philosophy, religion and poetry necessitate one another. With his astonishing sense for the technical device in art he discussed above all metaphor and symbol as the basic element in poetry, and in some points he anticipated the symbolism of later times. To these lectures we owe the phrase of the “unity and indivisibility” of a work of art as well as that of criticism as the art of understanding.

Thus began the discovery of the spiritual unity of a world literature. The name, it is true, was coined by Goethe (Eckermann, October 3rd, 1828); but in fact this literature had been inaugurated by the romantics some thirty years before. These fifteen lectures by August Wilhelm Schlegel, which appeared in German as Dramatische Vorlesungen were delivered at a time of extreme unrest and in a country where this unrest was particularly strong. They not only contained a literary programme, but they sprang from a heart that could no longer ignore the fact that a crisis and a breach were approaching. After his return to Coppet Schlegel experienced a time of peace and concentrated work so far unknown to him. Mme de Staël was working on De l'Allemagne and Schlegel was preparing his lectures for publication in book-form. Thus Germany was the topic of conversation between the two. The Berlin lectures were, apart from a few minor samples, never published. But with his Vienna lectures, which ran through three editions between 1809 and 1841, Schlegel had written a best-seller in literary history. By now it has been translated into all important languages in the world, in the USA it underwent a reprint, and in the Nordic and Slav countries it started movements similar to that of German romanticism. The book has been responsible for the understanding of the terms “classical” and “modern” outside Germany. Since then there have been but two parties: Hommes selon Boileau et selon Schlegel³⁷.

Still more guests arrived at Coppet: The Dane Oehlenschläger, the painter Overbeck, Zacharias Werner who preached that in your mistress you really love God, Frau von Krüdener who talked of nothing but heaven and hell, Chamisso whose pipe never went out and the beautiful Julie Récamier who thought of love affairs as of social games³⁸. Bonstetten wrote to Friederike Brun³⁹: “Nothing has changed at Coppet. You'll see everybody turning Catholic, Bohemian, Martinistic, mystic, all this on account of Schlegel, and to top it all, everybody turns German.” Sometimes talking was replaced by letter-writing.

Then “the woman with the colossal heart”, as Zacharias Werner called Mme der Staël, had her darkest days: Benjamin Constant had secretly got married, and their relationship was broken off. Her name also got involved more and more deeply in political polemics. It figured in police registers of all countries. When in 1810 her book De l'Allemagne was printed at Nicolle's in Paris the government had it pulped straight away and the authoress received orders to leave the country within twenty-four hours. Thus the translation of Schlegel's lectures into French had to wait.

Then Mme de Staël had trouble with her passport. She considered emigrating to the United States of America, but then settled down in Geneva, while Schlegel lived in Berne. Her letters began to contain sharp words concerning his lack of economy and they could not but annoy Schlegel. For he had never been either economical or patient. Yet he waited for her, in order to help her cross the frontiers with her young husband, de Rocca⁴⁰. Literature still occupied him more intensely than anything else. In his Vienna lectures he had devoted one whole lecture to Cervantes and Camões, and this subject continued to interest him. His brother Friedrich, as well as Tieck, had also spent many hours over Camões. Alexander von Humboldt became full of enthusiasm for the Lusiades⁴¹, the famous edition of which was printed in Paris on behalf of the Marquis de Souza-Botelho, a frequent visitor at Coppet. Schlegel recommended Mme de Staël to work with greater concentration. In February 1812 he wrote to her: “I find work is one of the necessary elements in life.” Meanwhile news of approaching war became more frequent, and regiments began to march.

Schlegel and Mme de Staël crossed the Austrian frontier and became the last travellers to see Moscow before it went up in flames five weeks later⁴². They were received with the greatest enthusiasm by the cosmopolitan society in St. Peterburg. But Schlegel had ceased to be a writer. He had taken the step from literature to politics. And who among his friends had not done the same? Friedrich Schlegel had taken part in the Austrian campaign of 1809 as press chief. Varnhagen von Ense was active in politics. Fouqué⁴³ had joined his regiment. Steffens volunteered for the Guards, and the young lieutenent Heinrich von Kleist stood outside Mainz under General Kalkreuth. People suddenly found their friends in Count Klenau's light cavalry, in the Lützow Corps and in Royal Imperial Headquarters at Deutsch-Wagram⁴⁴.

On September 24th, 1812, the party arrived in Stockholm. The French marshal Bernadotte⁴⁵, the new aspirant to the throne of Sweden and an old friend of Mme de Staël's, managed to draw Schlegel into his service. He made him his confidential secretary and soon after appointed him Privy Councillor. From then on Schlegel wrote the political history of Europe. As a politician he felt as much a European as he had done as a writer. At Bernadotte's request he wrote a memoir about Germany's decline under the title of “Mémoire sur l'état de l'Allemagne et sur les moyens d'y former une insurrection nationale”. He also wrote about the Continental System⁴⁶ and its influence on Sweden (1813). He became the author of several speeches and pamphlets. He took leave from Mme de Staël and accompained Bernadotte, then commander of the northern army, to the headquarters in Stralsund; their duties took them on to Spandau, Potsdam, Leipzig and to the Rhine. He lived wholly as a diplomat, in a uniform decorated with medals, among which was the Order of Vasa. He was often without accomodation and an observer of victories and death around him.

Back on German soil he began to feel his loss. Tieck's Phantasus⁴⁷ fell into his hands, with a preface addressed to himself: “It was a beautiful time of my life when I met you and your brother Friedrich; and it was even more so when Novalis and we lived united for art and science and worked together in numerous and various endeavours.” “Worked together”—this past tense struck Schlegel's sensitive ear. Were they ever going to work together again? He was becoming conscious of a turning-point in his life. Ten brief years had deprived him of the country to which he belonged. In June 1813 he wrote: “It is very likely that from now on I shall no longer have a fatherland, a fact that is going to be very painful to me; for I feel great affection for Germany … However, poetry, the fine arts, philosophy and religion will remain to me, and, perhaps, friendship—for of love I may no longer think.” And with a certain manliness he added, “and I hope still to write a solid book in order to prove that my personality has not been sold into slavery.”

Then Madame de Staël arrived in England. Her book appeared in London and between 1820 and 1830 it became the bible of the romantic generation. Her letters to Schlegel now bore the address of “Chevalier”, and they were full of war news and worries about her son Albert's adventures and debts. Schlegel, on the other hand, was writing of marching troops, and Mme de Staël could never quite follow when he told her of their crossing of the Rhine, of a new and hardened Germany, of their march on Paris and their plans to overrun Switzerland. She remained a Parisian and in her letters to Benjamin Constant, who had published an outstanding novel Adolphe and some most provocative pamphlets, she wrote with some concern: “I had rather God banned me from France than that he should lead me back there with the help of foreigners.” Schlegel had almost become an eye-witness of the battle of Leipzig⁴⁸ where he saw the armies of all nations fight for Europe; this experience made a European of him again. In the service of Bernadotte he stood in personal relationship with such leading statesmen as Gentz, Hardenberg, Baron vom Stein and Count Münster⁴⁹. He wrote propaganda pamphlets against the Danes who occupied and pillaged Hamburg. He supported Bernadotte's secret candidature to the French throne and believed in a united Europe. But Waterloo resulted in nothing but a kingdom of the Bourbons and a struggle for existence among national states. Mme de Staël, who no longer felt a part of this Europe, pressed him to join her. Thus he arrived in London and, for the first time, found himself on English soil, where he was met, not by Shakespeare, but by a woman considerably aged. In 1814 he accompanied her to Paris, where she received an enthusiastic welcome. But Schlegel's political ambition was dead. Bernadotte, “a black-bird who thought himself an eagle”, had failed, and the Bourbons did not interest him. All his thoughts went back to one summer at Coppet.

Ever since 1815 he had been busy collecting songs of the Troubadours. He loved rummaging among manuscripts. A precious volume bound in leather that was found among his papers after his death contains sixty calligraphic texts. His interest turned more and more towards Germany. Reviews written for the Heidelberger Jahrbücher grew into long epistles. His increasing historical interest made him wish for a collection of source material for Germany following the example of Lodovico Antonio Muratori's Rerum Italicarum scriptores praecipui for Italy and Dom Bouquet's Recueil des historiens des Gaules for France. His wish was to be fulfilled when, at the suggestion of Baron vom Stein, the Monumenta Germaniae historica were founded in 1819.

Madame de Staël, on her part, no longer enjoyed the great days as she used to do. She went back to Coppet and got her daughter Albertine married to the Duc de Broglie. There was no more play-acting or talk of love. On July 13th, 1817, Madame de Staël died in Paris. For Schlegel there remained a few last duties to fulfil. Together with her son August he took the coffin to Coppet where, at her own request, she was buried. Her last will decreed that Schlegel should be executor of her literary remains and publish them. This set her family against him and at last he decided to waive his claims. The Chevalier Schlegel had grown tired of the part of a servant he had been made to play.

Berne offered him a professorship for Greek literature, which he refused on account of the provincial character of the town. He went back to Germany, full of exaggerated expectations, although politically indifferent. As many before and after him he learnt that you never find a country the same as you remembered it. The stretch of country between Geneva and Coppet had been the scene of many dramatic events for him, and it was painful to be separated from it. Berlin had not forgotten him; Schlegel, however, did not intend to apply for anything, but waited to be asked. Alexander von Humboldt explored the ground, and the King appointed him professor at the University of Berlin on May 2nd, 1818. This was the important position he had been looking for, and Berlin wanted to retain him. Yet Schlegel refused again. This was frowned upon in high quarters. The minister Karl von Altenstein asked him to consider “that a large university and an educated public would feel painfully the deprivation of such lectures as you have announced.” But he could no longer offer the element of provocation that would have been necessary for a chair in such a large city. He was no longer the romantic of Berlin he had been in 1804. He preferred a province less challenging and asked to be transferred to the new University of Bonn.

Off and on he still enjoyed the society of women, and he even thought of getting married. He actually entered into a marriage, as disastrous as it was brief, with Sophie Paulus, the daughter of the theologian in Jena. Sophie never followed him to Bonn. She bore his name, and hardly anything else. Thus at the age of fifty he was living alone, solitary and elegant—the students called him “Mr Parisian”—and he remained a German who does not quite feel at home in Germany. He felt it hard to become an integrated member of society. He turned away from the later romantics in whom he missed the speculative vein of his own generation, and had no contact with either Arnim, Brentano or Eichendorff. For Grillparzer⁵⁰ he had nothing but sarcasm. To this was added the political climate of the time. On December 10th, 1819, he wrote to Philipp Joseph Rehfues: “The profession of a writer and a university teacher has become the object of general distrust.” Schlegel himself became increasingly afraid of being ignored, pushed aside or forgotten.

He completely immersed himself in his literary work, which acquired almost encyclopaedic dimensions. He lectured on history, on the Greeks and Romans, the Etruscans, pictorial art and on French and German literature. The more distant past was also included. Thus in 1818 he wrote his witty book Observations sur la langue et la littérature provencale, and only one year later he translated Madame Necker de Saussure's “Notice sur le caractère et les écrits de Mme de Staël”. In the house of a Bonn patrician “who owns the best-furnished house and the prettiest wife in the whole town,” as he wrote in 1820 to his former pupil Auguste de Staël, he once again enjoyed the rôle of a master of ceremonies and arranged play-readings of Shakespeare. At about this time he made the remark: “Contemporary literature leaves me cold, only the antediluvian literature can rouse my enthusiasm.” With this attitude he entered his life as a scholar, a life not without vicissitudes. He had seen professors being reprimanded in a way he would have refused to stand for himself. His protest took the form of a resignation from the Prussian civil service. His old desire never left him to make new demands and to seek for repeated self-assertion. Even his inaugural lecture as Rector in 1824 centred around the subject of academic freedom.

He began to lecture on Roman history in Latin and immersed himself in Indian studies. Europe no longer appealed to him. These Indian interests had been roused early in life by Georg Forster's translation of Sakuntala.⁵¹ They became visible in his Berlin lectures, were deepened by discussions with his brother Friedrich and the Oriental scholars Chézy and Langlès, whom he had met during his first stay in Paris in 1805, and they gained shape through his studies of manuscripts in London. His interest in history made him also turn towards pre-historic cultures. In Bonn Schlegel became more and more the organizer of academic activities for which he intended to gain public acknowledgement and state support. He submitted the suggestion of expanding Oriental studies in the direction of Sanskrit to the Ministry for Cultural Affairs in Berlin. He stuck doggedly to his systematic comparison between Sanskrit, Greek, Latin and the old Germanic dialects for which he had planned the name of “Etymologicum novum sive synopsis linguarum”. He asked for the authorization to have Indian printing types for Bonn made in Paris in order to make possible the printing of Indian texts, text-books, dictionaries and chrestomathies in Germany. In 1823 he edited the Bhagavad-Gîtâ⁵², the first book in Old Indian to be made in Germany, which proved to be still usable for scientific work fifty years after his death. This editing began to grow into large dimensions. He reported to Albertine de Staël that he was busy restoring the national epic of the Indians, the Ramayana (1829), and shortly afterwards he was working on “Hitopadesa”, the Indian mirror of princes, together with his pupil Lassen. He edited a collection of books on India, the second number of which contained the treatise “Zur Geschichte des Elefanten” that was still used for Meyer's Encyclopaedia in our century. In the Berliner Kalender of 1829 and 1831 he reported on the situation of our knowledge of India. He collected manuscripts and undertook informative trips to France and England. He wrote on “Die Sternbilder des Tierkreises” in Old India. In 1827 he again faced a Berlin audience when lecturing on the study of Indian antiquity and received a warning from his friend Johannes Schulze, a councillor in the Prussian Ministry of Education, not to admit ladies to his lectures. Schlegel wanted to be heard abroad as well and therefore wrote a brief “Abriß von den europäischen Verhältnissen der deutschen Literatur” (1825) for English readers. A number of essays, which were partly printed and partly only in manuscript form, were given to Georg Reimer in Berlin to be published under the title of Kritische Schriften in 1827. He carried on his negotiations on the completion of his Shakespeare edition, a task for which he suggested his friend Tieck, and at the same time did not forget to remind Reimer of a small barrel of his favourite small beets from Teltow that had been promised him.

He normally went to bed at ten o'clock at night and was at work at five o'clock in the morning. Some of his letters grew into learned treatises and hardly contained a single personal remark. Off and on he wrote them in French, and all of them were carefully dated and almost too conscientious on title and address. Publishers offered their services, almanacs asked him for contributions and his works were reprinted more than he liked. As a philologist he was frequently attacked but also much honoured and even more often misunderstood. For he was a philologist only in so far as the devotion to the word was most important to him.

In 1824 Schlegel was awarded the Order of the Red Eagle, and in 1831 he became a member of the Légion d'Honneur. He was introduced to the French King in the Tuileries⁵³, was invited to a private dinner and led the Queen to table. He became an honorary member of the Science Academies in Munich, Göttingen and St. Petersburg. He became a corresponding member of the Royal Academy in Berlin and in 1824 he was distinguished by Friedrich Wilhelm IV by the order of Pour le Mérite. He still wore a blue frock-coat and wide grey trousers, but the brilliant knight of ideas had turned into a fundamentally head-strong scholar. Thus he inveighed against the specialists who lacked the comprehensive point of view. As a translator he fought against interlinear versions and demanded that the spirit and the contents of a text should be recreated fully. He had a hard stand with himself and others with him.

The Academy of Sciences in Berlin undertook at the request of the young king to edit the works of its founder, Frederick the Great, in order to make them accessible to a European public. Apart from scholars such as Friedrich von Raumer and Leopold von Ranke Schlegel was also asked for his co-operation in writing preface and introduction. From him, in particular, a masterpiece of criticism was expected. But his desire to have the great Prussian King's linguistic usage and orthography examined immediately by the most modern standards prescribed by the French Academy, a desire which was partly corroborated by Jakob Grimm, was generally taken amiss. His obsession with what is correct had fully got hold of him. Just as he judged verse strictly by the ideal of metrics, thus he also wished for a purified edition showing Frederick as a flawless author in French. His letters to the authorities gradually grew irritated, and his naturally brilliant style, his fluctuation between warmth and coldness, between irony and devotion, were not interpreted to his credit. It was in many respects the wrong tone at a time when the self-confident inhabitants of Berlin had begun to set up monuments commemorating events and generals of Prussian history, and to employ their best artists—Schinkel, Tieck and Rauch⁵⁴—for the erection of a monument to Frederick the Great. On the other hand, Schlegel had lost his fire of the essayist and what remained was a critic with whom co-operation was difficult.

In 1829 Friedrich Schlegel died. And, in spite of the alienation that had set in, August Wilhelm Schlegel's youth died with him. In the same year Goethe had edited his Briefwechsel mit Schiller. Schiller's hatred against what he called “Schlegelei”, a term that was left standing by Goethe, disappointed and embittered Schlegel. For he still had his teeth and claws and kept thinking of public protest. Only one person remained whom he approached with a certain tenderness and whose letters he treasured: his old friend Tieck. His Novellen he read with extreme pleasure, he went to sleep laughing over “Fortunat”, and the “Zopf-novelle” from “Gesellschaft auf dem Lande” he called “something that has not been written ever since Don Quixote (March 20th, 1838). In September 1828 Tieck came to see him in Bonn with Henriette von Finkenstein, and he wished nothing more than that Schlegel should write his memoirs. “Who can tell a story like you? Who else is a master of free criticism like you and has your gift for language?”⁵⁵ And from then on their correspondence that had suffered various interruptions was continued to the end. Tieck consoled him about “the balderdash of correspondences such as those of Zelter, Rahel and Bettina”⁵⁶, prevented him from defending himself publicly and managed to revive his old cheerfulness. In company with him Schlegel, the Beau Brummel among the professors, even had a humorous attitude towards himself. On June 2nd, 1836, he wrote to Ludwig Tieck: “I am holding my own. At least I am trying. This spring I have even taken up riding again. Tidily arrayed and decorated with my various medals, in my newest wig that has not yet gone moth-eaten, I make quite a presentable figure—in the evening.” He admitted that he spent a lot of time on a well-kept appearance. The man who refused to grow old saw age overtake him without admitting defeat. “I need a servant,” Schlegel wrote, “a carriage of my own and good inns.” And rarely has a more charming invitation been written than that which he sent to Tieck on August 12th, 1836: “You know my house and my kitchen, but not my cellar (that is, not my heavenly Assmannshauser wine of '34 vintage, and there is also champagne and Rhine wine), you know my comfortable chaise; you know the rooms we shared (this time, however, I shall give my widest bed up to you); the newly decorated ladies' rooms upstairs you do not yet know; the bathroom you don't yet know in its new and very comfortable arrangement … my jokes you know, likewise my good temper and my chattiness, my passion for yourself you know, perhaps, not quite.”

The last letter in the collection of letters by and to August Wilhelm Schlegel (J. Körner, Wien 1930) is one dated April 10th, 1845, and written by August Böckh⁵⁷, the director of the Academic Committee for the edition of the works of Frederick the Great, in which Schlegel is being urged to send the introductory chapter. This chapter was never finished and has survived in his posthumous papers in the form of a fair copy done by his secretary. It was only his last letters that Schlegel dictated. He had his scruples about a possible alienation of the content if the letters were written by somebody else. His illness was hardly mentioned. Schlegel died on May 12th, 1845. He was buried in Bonn next to Niebuhr and Arndt⁵⁸, Heinrich von Kleist's sister and Beethoven's mother.

This is not exactly where we should expect to find this Ulysses who strayed by accident into the civil service and a professorship. Friedrich Schlegel, Tieck, Schleiermacher, Schelling and Novalis lie elsewhere. Scattered they all lie. August Wilhelm Schlegel, however, has not even found a biographer to write with sufficient eulogy the story of his complex life. He entered literary history as an aesthetician who subjected all artistic values to the standards of his own taste. He grew silent after his Vienna lectures in 1808. More than once has it happened that a romantic was written off as spent when he had passed the charming age. Thus it has become necessary to re-appraise the second half of his life in which he used his manly reason, which Caroline had early appreciated, to go beyond literature and to become active in politics and affairs of state.

A poet Schlegel was not, although he had the gift of making excellent verse, a gift which he himself doubted. Thus he was not interested in a new edition of his poems that Reimer offered him. The translator of extraordinary achievement excelled the poet. The essayist will prove to be more important than the translator. And the critic Schlegel was superseded by the scholar attentive to the hidden forces of history. As a lecturer facing an urban intelligentsia he spoke, across wars, of the unifying quality of poetry, and by giving a synoptic view of European literatures he provided his time with a new spirituality and a new idea of history.

Schlegel had an extremely characteristic physiognomy, his own marked predilections, his own reservations, and an attitude determined by numerous contrasts. His was an obligingness that never entered into obligations and thus made for detachment, even from himself. What he has left us has not been appropriately evaluated. He always achieved less than he had hoped for. Much has remained a mere plan owing to his insatiability in planning. He never wrote the life of Dante that he had had in mind since 1795. A work on “Titurel” in co-operation with Sulpiz Boisserée⁵⁹ remained unfinished. An edition of the Nibelungenlied, of Propertius and of Tristan were never undertaken. And yet they had been in his thoughts and are thus part of his life's confession. He had the flair for what was still unexplored, without therefore ever living on the crumbs of science. Gifted with historic imagination he became a master of exploration in a field reaching from Dante to Shakespeare, from Shakespeare to Calderón, from Calderón to epic songs and from them to Asiatic poetry. If other poets of his generation that grew to manhood in the years between the appearance of Beethoven's “Eroica” and his “Appassionata”⁶⁰ discovered unknown continents inside ourselves, Schlegel on his part conquered whole continents of so far unknown spirituality outside us. It is to him that we owe the view of perspectives, the miracle of analogies, the fight for the soil of the Old World. He made us face Dante, Shakespeare, Calderón and Camões, the heroes of the Arthurian legends and the Nibelungenlied, in a word, those among our ancestors long forgotten to us, and he helped, with Goethe, to make German literature part of world literature.

In a long life like this there were bound to be many who called his hegemony in doubt, particularly in such fields as the Middle Ages and Sanskrit where men like Bopp, Diez and v. d. Hagen⁶¹ were already engaged in special studies—but they too, by the way, had all learnt from him. It remains his merit, however, to have founded the study of Sanskrit and thereby to have given lasting life to things that seemed to be nothing but romantic speculation, when the idea first appeared in letters by Tieck and Friedrich Schlegel in 1803: “I believe more and more,” Tieck then wrote, “that the Orient and the North belong closely together and explain each other as well as the whole of old and modern times.” While Friedrich Schlegel only speculated that everything comes from India, August Wilhelm Schlegel put this romantic idea into practice: he made science the interplay of nations.

Schlegel made enemies over small as well as great matters. He criticized others and very often in a presumptious way, and the others paid him back mercilessly. His theses were found fault with and his private life became an object of ridicule—even more so his appearance as a learned man of the world, who during his lectures had a servant in livery beside him to snuff the candles in their silver candlesticks. But Schlegel also had the ability to write elegantly on scientific subjects. From then on it became possible for scholars to risk a readable style in a scientific work. He lacked the sparkling wit of his brother Friedrich. He also took ideas second-hand. But as an expert on classical antiquity with a language of rare brilliance he became the valiant mediator who opened up for a coming century—and also for us—the whole of intellectual Europe. Overlooking for a moment Heinrich Heine's⁶² unkind description of his Bonn professor, we can take a sentence about poets from another of Heine's works, Die romantische Schule, and apply it to August Wilhelm Schlegel: “We are all human, we descend into the grave and leave behind us our word, and when this has fulfilled its mission it returns to God's bosom, which is the gathering-place for all poets' words, the home of all harmony.”

Notes

1. Anne Louise Germaine, Baronne de Staël-Holstein (1766-1817), French writer. Daughter of J. Necker, minister of finance under Louis XVI, and the writer Suzanne Necker-Curchod, in whose salon she received her first intellectual training from men such as Diderot and Grimm. In 1802 she was banned from Paris and went to Germany; in Weimar she met Schiller, Goethe and Wieland, and in Berlin August Wilhelm Schlegel; the latter's advice became a great help to her in her work on “De l'Allemagne” (1810). This book gained tremendous influence on French romanticism, and the image of Germany it gave became predominant for several decades. In her novels “Delphine” (1802) and “Corinne” (1807) she stood up for women's right to extramarital love and for public acknowledgement of their intellectual work.

2. A. W. Schlegel and Mme de Staël. Edited by P. de Pange, Hamburg 1940, and translated by Willi Grabert.

3. Götz von Berlichingen, drama by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, appeared first in 1773.

   Otto von Wittelsbach, drama of chivalry by Franz Marius von Babo, director of the Court Theatre in Munich from 1805 onwards.

   Oberon: an epic in stanzas by Christoph Martin Wieland, appeared first in 1780.

   Ossian: Irish hero of Ossianic poetry, a blind singer of legendary times. The Scottish poet James Macpherson (1736-1796) published poetry full of Romantic Weltschmerz which he claimed to be translations from the Gaelic Ossian epic. They became of great importance for German romanticism. The fact that they were forged was proved by L. Chr. Stern in 1895.

4. Spittler: Ludwig Timotheus (1752-1810); historian; in accordance with the spirit of enlightenment he attempted an undogmatic and historical interpretation of ecclesiastical history. His “Landesgeschichten” were of great influence on the political ideas of his contemporaries.

   Schlözer: August Ludwig (1735-1809); historian and journalist.

   Lichtenberg: Georg Christoph (1742-1799); as a professor for physics his experimental lectures gained him great fame; his discoveries include the electrical discharges named after him (Lichtenberg figures). Among his better known works are his aphorisms, in which he attacked the ‘Sturm und Drang’ cult of genius, Lavater's system of physiognomy and sentimentality. In consequence of his trip to England he published the famous “Ausführliche Erklärung der Hogarthschen Kupferstiche” (1794-1799).

5. Heyne: Christian Gottlob (1729-1812); classical scholar; it was he who introduced the history of civilization as a university subject.

   Bürger: Gottfried August (1747-1794); a member of the Göttinger Hainbund, a society founded by young and patriotic poets in 1772; his poems were heavily criticized in 1791 by Schiller, who denied that he had any poetic talent at all. In his later life Bürger grew more and more solitary. One of the few friends that remained faithful to him was A. W. Schlegel.

6. Heyne's edition of Virgil appeared in four volumes in 1775.

7. Akademie der Schönen Redekünste, a journal edited by G. A. Bürger in the years 1790-1794.

8. Wackenroder: Wilhelm Heinrich (1771-1798); together with his friend Ludwig Tieck (see note 10) one of the earliest and purest romantics; his works contain the essential elements of later romantic poetry, such as nature, countryside, common people, the Middle Ages; his main aim was to deepen artistic experience in such a way as to include the realm of religion.

9. Schlegel: Friedrich (1772-1829); brother to August Wilhelm Schlegel; worked in the fields of philosophy of art and civilization and literary history; his absolute ideals were Greek humanity and art; his only attempt at a novel, “Lucinde” remained a fragment; as a disciple of Herder he was among the founders of modern literary history, of the history of ideas and of modern interpretation of literature.

10. Chamisso: Adelbert von (1781-1838); German poet and natural scientist; in his lyrical poetry he followed the tradition established by Goethe; nevertheless there are also political and social overtones in his poetry, mainly in his ballads.

    Tieck: Ludwig (1773-1853); the most prolific of the early romantics; author of fantastic poetry, ‘Volksmärchen’, popular romantic poetry, dramas and translations (as for example Don Quixote from the Spanish and courtly lyric from the Middle High German); editor of the works of Wackenroder, as well as those of Novalis (in conjunction with Friedrich von Schlegel).

11. In 1790 Bürger's “Akademie der Schönen Redekünste” published an essay by Schlegel on Schiller's poem “Die Künstler”, in which Schlegel professed a favourable attitude to Schiller in spite of his different ideas on art.

12. Jacobi: Friedrich Heinrich (1743-1819); philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment; as a poet he felt a great affinity for the ‘Sturm und Drang’.

13. “Herzensergiessungen eines kunstliebenden Klosterbruders” appeared in 1797; “Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen”, a novel about art and artists, in 1798; the fragmentary novel “Die Lehrlinge zu Sais” by Novalis (whose real name was Friedrich von Hardenberg, 1772-1881) appeared in 1802.

14. Reichardt, Johann Friedrich (1752-1814); composer and writer on music; from 1775 onwards Master of the King's Music at the court of Frederick the Great in Berlin; a friend of Goethe's and the romantics.

15. Wieland, Christoph Martin (1753-1813); during the years 1762 and 1766 he published the first German prose translation of twenty-two Shakespeare plays; although this translation bears many traits of the rococo period, which was Wieland's, it had its greatest impact on the generations between the ‘Sturm und Drang’ and the romantic period; by then it had been revised and completed by Johann Joachim Eschenburg (1743-1820), a friend of Lessing's; it underwent a second edition, in twelve volumes, in the years 1798-1806.

16. Allgemeine Literaturzeitung: it appeared in Jena and Leipzig from 1785 to 1803, in Halle and Leipzig from 1804 to 1849; it was edited by Ch. G. Schütz and others.

17. Voss, Johann Heinrich (1751-1826); poet and, above all, translator; his translations of the Odyssey (1781) and the Iliad (1793) are extremely pedantic in places.

    Kotzebue, August Friedrich Ferdinand von (1761-1819), writer and court playwright; in Weimar he found no acceptance from Goethe whom he later violently attacked; Schlegel made fun of him in his “Ehrenpforte und Triumphbogen für den Theaterpräsidenten von Kotzebue” (1801).

    Iffland, August Wilhelm (1759-1814); actor, stage-director and dramatist; author of sixty-five technically well made plays; together with Kotzebue the main writer of popular dramas during the time of Goethe.

18. Fichte, Johann Gottlieb (1762-1814); philosopher; in 1794 he became professor in Jena and in 1799 he went to Berlin.

    Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von (1775-1854); philosopher; a friend of Hölderlin's and Hegel's; in 1798 Goethe helped him to obtain a professorship in Jena.

19. Paulus, Heinrich Eberhard Gottlob (1761-1851); theologian, representative of a rationalist theology.

    Hufeland, Gottlieb (1760-1817); lawyer, co-editor of the Allgemeine Literaturzeitung.

    Loder, Justus Christian (1753-1832); professor of medicine in Jena; the urbane family doctor of Schlegel and his friends.

20. Frau von Kalb, Charlotte (1761-1843); a friend of Schiller's, later also of Hölderlin's and Jean Paul's; author of the sentimental novel “Cornelia” and of her own life-story up to 1791; the original of Linda in Jean Paul's novel “Titan”.

21. Herder, Johann Gottfried (1744-1803); theologian, poet and philosopher; collector of folk songs; great literary arbiter of his time, giving inspiration to many.

22. Tieck's Malchen: Tieck's wife Amalie (1769-1857), daughter of the Hamburg theologian and preacher Julius Gustav Alberti, a close friend of Klopstock's and Lessing's.

23. Tieck, Friedrich (1776-1851); Ludwig Tieck's brother; one of the most important representatives of Berlin classicism; from 1801 onwards a friend of Goethe's in Weimar.

24. Steffens, Henrik (1773-1845); philosopher and natural scientist; a student of Schlegel's; main representative of romantic natural philosophy; author of (among other works) “Grundzüge philosophischer Naturwissenschaft” and “Christliche Religionsphilosophie”, as well as of ‘Novellen’.

25. Novalis: his real name was Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg (1772-1801); student of Fichte's and close acquaintance of Schiller's in Jena; a universally interested mind, a poet, philosopher and natural scientist; author of (among other works) “Hymnen an die Nacht” and “Heinrich von Ofterdingen”, the latter being the romantic counterpart to Goethe's “Wilhelm Meister”; later he also wrote religious songs; his works were edited posthumously by Friedrich Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck in 1802.

26. Böttiger, Karl-August (1760-1835); author of essays on philological and archeological subjects and, above all, on the theory of drama; great admirer of Iffland; ridiculed by Ludwig Tieck in “Der Gestiefelte Kater”, “Zerbino” and the ‘Novelle’ “Vogelscheuche”.

    Nicolai, Friedrich (1733-1811); writer, publisher and book-seller; centre and organizer of the Berlin Enlightenment; he launched vehement invectives against Herder, Goethe, Schiller, Kant, Fichte and others and thus made them ill-disposed towards him; Fichte attacked him first, then Goethe in the “Xenien”; in this way he excluded himself from the literary development of his time.

    Xenien: In classical antiquity ‘xeniai’ were gifts presented to guests by the host; later the title of the 13th book of the (in part extremely sarcastic) epigrams of the Latin poet Martial; this title was taken up again by Schiller and Goethe in 1776 for distichs attacking their opponents.

    Matthisson, Friedrich (1761-1831); a lyrical poet of considerable formal talent; his neo-classical poetry is characterized by its rhetorical smoothness and, at least in part, pale sentimentality; encouraged and helped by Schiller; his poem “Adelaide” was set to music by Beethoven.

27. Schleiermacher, Friedrich Ernst Daniel (1768-1834); philosopher, theologian and translator of Plato; his theological works are characterized by their opposition to both orthodoxy and rationalism; his notion of God was pantheistic, his notion of religion derived from psychology.

    Bernhardi, August Ferdinand (1769-1820); writer; close to the older romantics; in 1799 he married Ludwig Tieck's sister; author of satirical tales and a collection of dramas; his main work, “Sprachlehre”, influenced the linguistic philosophy of his time.

28. In 1799 Kotzebue's farce “Der Hyperboreische Esel” appeared, attacking Goethe among others. The Berlin enlightened philosopher Friedrich Nicolai wrote a polemical novel “Leben und Meinungen des Magisters Nothanker” against pietism, orthodoxy and sentimental writing (1773-1776); this was followed by an attack by Fichte in “Friedrich Nicolais Leben und sonderbare Meinungen” and Goethe's and Schiller's “Xenien” (see note 26).

    Athenäum: a journal edited by the Schlegel brothers from 1798 to 1800; the programmatical organ of the romantic school (facsimile edition in 1924).

    Lucinde: novel by Friedrich von Schlegel, revealing personal love affairs and attempting a new sensual and spiritual unity and the freedom of love.

29. Müller, Adam Heinrich (1779-1829); sociologist and political scientist; in his Dresden lectures on the “Elemente der Staatskunst” (1808-1809) he attacked the theory of natural law and universalism; main opponent of the Prussian idea of the state and Hardenberg's reforms.

30. Schinkel, Karl Friedrich (1781-1841); architect and painter; his architecture shows the most richly elaborated forms in German classicism; his buildings include Schloss Tegel, which he built for Wilhelm von Humboldt, and various palaces for royal princes.

    Schadow, Gottfried (1764-1850); sculptor and graphic artist, one of the leading spirits of the German classical period; among his works are the Victory quadriga on the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, the Luther monument in Wittenberg and numerous statues.

31. Kleist, Heinrich von (1777-1811); German poet, dramatist and writer of ‘Novellen’; author of “Prinz von Homburg”, “Penthesilea”, and “Das Erdbeben in Chile”.

    Hoffmann, E. T. A. (Ernst Theodor Amadeus) (1776-1822); writer, musician and graphic artist; he set to music Goethe's ‘Singspiel’, “Scherz, List und Rache” (1801), wrote on the theory of music, and published romantic fairytales; the capriccio “Prinzessin Brambilla” (1821) can be considered the peak of his work; it was Hoffmann through whom the German romantic movement acquired international importance.

    Clausewitz, Karl von (1780-1831); officer and great German strategist; author of “Vom Kriege” (1816-30).

    Humboldt, Wilhelm von (1767-1835); literary critic, statesman and diplomat; also of great importance for cultural policy and as the founder of the German humanistic university; a friend of Goethe's and, even more so, of Schiller's.

32. Schlegel and Caroline, née Michaelis, were divorced in 1803; she then married the philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling; she was the most gifted woman of the romantic period; her house was the centre of the social and intellectual life of the early romantics in Jena.

33. The essay appeared in French in 1795; Goethe's translation followed in 1796.

34. Constant; Henri-Benjamin Constant de Rebeque (1767-1830); writer and politician of Swiss origin; his enthusiasm for the French revolution made him acquire French nationality in 1794; in 1799 he became a member of the Tribune; in 1802 he was sent into exile by Napoleon, and consequently lived first in Weimar, then with Mme de Staël at Coppet on Lake Geneva; his best work, the novel “Adolphe” (1816), is largely the history of his relationship with Mme de Staël.

35. Mme de Staël's attempted suicide: The stormiest time at Coppet was the year 1807, when Constant intended to part from her; letters written at this time contain her threats to commit suicide. Cf. Benjamin Constant, Journal intime; in German: Reise durch die deutsche Kultur, Potsdam, 1919, p. 156.

36. Pichler, Caroline (1769-1843); Austrian woman writer; at around 1800 her house was the centre of literary and intellectual activities in Vienna; author of patriotic novels and poems on events from Austrian history.

    Gentz, Friedrich von (1764-1832); after an initial favourable attitude towards the French revolution he then translated Burke's “Reflections on the Revolution in France” into German (1793) and thus joined the anti-revolutionary forces; in 1809 he was employed by Metternich.

    Collin, Johann Heinrich von; poet, author of the drama “Regulus”, and translator of Schlegel's “Comparaison”.

37. Boileau, Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (1636-1711); French poet and art critic; in his “Art Poétique” (1674), in which he largely followed the example of Horace's “Ars poetica”, he formulated without much originality the rules for artistic creation as they were universally acknowledged during the French classical period.

38. Oehlenschläger, Adam Gottlob (1779-1850); Danish writer and professor for aesthetics; he laid the foundation for Danish poetry during the 19th century, following his ideals Shakespeare, Schiller and Goethe.

    Overbeck, Johann Friedrich (1789-1879); German painter, who attempted the renewal of religious art; the speaker of the Nazarenes, a group of painters some of whom had converted to Catholicism; his notions concerning art were greatly influenced by those of Friedrich Schlegel.

    Werner, Zacharias (1768-1823); German writer and, since 1814, priest and preacher; author of mystical and religious historical plays.

    Frau von Krüdener, Barbara Juliane Freifrau von Krüdener (1764-1824); preacher and prophetess.

    Récamier, Jeanne Françoise Julie Adelaide, née Bernard (1777-1849); wife of a Paris banker; friend of Mme de Staël's, of Benjamin Constant and Chateaubriand; during Napoleon's time as Consul she gathered opposition against him in her salon; after her return from exile (1814) the adherents of the restauration; she was painted by famous artists of her time, such as David.

39. Bonstetten, Karl Viktor von (1745-1832); Swiss author, who wrote on the civilization and history of Switzerland.

    Brun, Friederike (1765-1835); author of lyrical poetry and travel journals.

40. Rocca, John; officer of hussars.

41. Lusiads: Camões (Camoens), Luis de (1524 or 1525-1580); Portuguese poet; in “Os Lusiades” he celebrated the historical deeds and the voyages of discovery of his people; he also wrote sonnets and songs.

42. On September 14th and 15th, Napoleon marched into Moscow; in the first night after this a fire broke out that did not die but until the 20th of September. A large part of the city was burnt down; formerly it was suggested that the fire was started by an act of heroism on the part of the Russian general Rostopchin, then commanding officer in Moscow, who set fire to his palace on precisely that night; the spread of the fire over the whole town, however, seems to have been the result of gross carelessness.

43. Varnhagen von Ense, Karl August (1785-1858); diplomat and writer in the service of Austria and Russia; he also served during the Prussian wars of liberation from Napoleon; the salon of his wife, Rachel Varnhagen von Ense, became the centre of literary life in the Berlin of the later part of the age of Goethe; here all the romantics met.

    de la Motte Fouqué, Friedrich Heinrich Karl Freiherr (1777-1843); his fairy-tale “Undine” (1811) provided the plot for Albert Lortzing's opera of the same title.

44. Lützow, Adolf Freiherr von (1782-1834); Prussian officer; formed the Lützowsche Freicorps from non-Prussian volunteers (the so-called “Black Squad”).

    Deutsch-Wagram in Lower Austria; in the Franco-Austrian war of 1809 Napoleon here forced his way across the Danube and won a victory over the Austrians under Archduke Karl.

45. Bernadotte, Jean Baptiste Jules (1763-1844); son of a lawyer, a general under Bonaparte in Italy; in 1804 Napoleon made him a marshal; in 1810, after he had become a Lutheran, the Swedish Estates elected him crown-prince; Karl XIII (1809-18) adopted him under the name of Karl Johann; in 1818 he ascended the throne of Sweden and Norway.

46. Continental System or Blockade: Napoleon's measures to close Continental economy to England (from 1806 onwards).

47. Phantasus: a work of miscellaneous content by Ludwig Tieck; the background is provided by discussions at a literary gathering, and old and new poetic works are interspersed (1812-1816).

48. The Battle of Leipzig: it took place from the 16th to 19th of October, 1813, and decided the issue of the wars of liberation against Napoleon.

49. Hardenberg, Karl August Fürst von (1750-1822); Prussian statesman; he continued to carry out the reforms started by the Freiherr vom Stein, introduced freedom of trade (1810), and secularized the state administration. In Prussia he built up a model administrative organization.

    von und zum Stein, Karl Reichsfreiherr (1757-1831); he organized the state administration and carried out the liberation of peasants (1807); his legislation of 1808 provided for local self-government of towns.

    Münster, Ernst Graf zu (1766-1839); from 1814 to 1815 a leading member of the Vienna Congress; he exerted considerable influence on the constitution of the Kingdom of Hanover.

50. Arnim, Achim von (1781-1831); a friend of Brentano's (see below) and the centre of the younger romantics; together with Brentano he compiled an anthology of old and new folksongs, some of which they themselves revised and altered; the anthology was given the title “Des Knaben Wunderhorn”. Brentano, Clemens (1778-1842), early romantic poet; author of fairy-tales, epistolary novels and comedies; the most gifted of German romantic poets, whose larger works, however, remained fragmentary.

    Eichendorff, Joseph von (1788-1857); writer of prose and poetry; among his greater works are the novel “Ahnung und Gegenwart”, and the ‘Novelle’ “Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts”.

    Grillparzer, Franz (1791-1872); Austrian dramatist, influenced by classical antiquity and Spanish authors; he also wrote two ‘Novellen’; in his works the two traditions of the Austrian baroque and the Vienna popular theatre converge and at the same time absorb some elements of the Spanish drama. They represent the transition from realistic to psychological writing, which is also the transition from the age of Goethe to modernity.

51. Sakuntala: drama in seven acts by the Indian poet Kalidasa (5th century a. d.); the plot is based on the Mahâ-Bhârata, the national epic of the Indians; after Sir William Jones translation into English had appeared in 1789, Forster translated this drama into German in 1791.

52. Bhagavad-Gîtâ, i. e. “The Song Sung by the Sublime One”, is an episode from the Indian national epic Mahâ-Bhârata.

53. Order of the Red Eagle: Prussian order awarded between 1792 and 1918. Légion d'honneur: highest French order, founded in 1802.

    Tuileries: former Paris residence of the French Queen, which was begun in 1564 by Catherine de Medici; later it was altered and inhabited by Napoleon and French Kings after him, until it burnt down in 1871 during the uprising of the commune.

54. Rauch, Christian Daniel (1777-1857); the greatest German classical architect after Schadow.

55. H. Lüdeke, Ludwig Tieck und die Brüder Schlegel, Frankfurt am Main, 1930.

56. Zelter, Karl Friedrich (1758-1832); musician and composer of popular solo and choral songs; also Goethe's adviser in all questions concerning music.

    Rachel: Rachel Varnhagen von Ense (see note 43).

    Bettina: her real name was Elisabeth von Arnim (1785-1859); the most original of women among the younger romantics; daughter of Maximiliane Laroche, Clemens Brentano's sister, and wife of Achim von Arnim; the collections of letters edited by her are based on real letters, but were revised and expanded by her; she clearly expressed the romantic view of life.

57. Böckh, August (1785-1867); classical scholar and founder of the historical study of the classics, which went beyond mere philology and included among its subjects the life, economy, science etc. of the Greeks.

58. Niebuhr, Barthold Georg (1776-1831); following the request of the Freiherr von und zum Stein he joined the Prussian civil service in 1806 as the director of the ‘Preussische Seehandlung’. After Stein's dismissal in 1810 he retired and took up lecturing on Roman history at the newly founded university in Berlin; he thus became the founder of historical criticism of sources.

    Arndt, Ernst Moritz (1769-1816); political writer and poet; professor at the university of Greifswald; in many points he followed Böhmer, Hamann and Herder in his criticism of an overrating of the importance of reason and pure thought in relation to given reality. He thus passionately emphasized the significance of natural and historical law of peoples and nations and became full of hatred against Napoleon; in 1818 he became professor of history at Bonn.

59. Boisserée, Sulpiz (1783-1854); an expert on art; together with his brother Melchior and his friend J. B. Bertram he devoted his life in Cologne to research on Medieval art in Germany; he was one of the most zealous advocates of the completion of the Cologne Cathedral, about which he wrote a detailed monograph between 1823 and 1832.

60. Symphony No. 3 in E flat major (“Eroica”) appeared in 1804; the piano sonata, also in E flat major (“Appassionata”) was composed in 1804-05 and appeared in 1806.

61. Bopp, Franz (1791-1867); linguist and founder of the comparative grammar of the Indo-European languages.

    Diez, Friedrich Christian (1794-1876); founder of Romance philology; following Goethe's suggestion he began to study Old Provençal literature.

    von der Hagen, Heinrich (1780-1856); expert on German philology; editor of many medieval German texts; he published for example a modern German translation and four editions of the Nibelungenlied.

62. Heine, Heinrich (1797-1856); German poet and writer; apart from his poems he wrote two tragic dramas and, above all, many travel journals and philosophical essays.