SCHLEGEL, AUGUST WILHELM VON. — German critic, philologist, and poet, born in Hanover on 5 Nov. 1767, died in Bonn on 12 May 1845.
He first studied theology at Göttingen, but soon abandoned it for literature. From 1795 to 1798 he was in Jena (where he became a professor in 1798), contributing to Schiller’s *Horen* and *Musenalmanach* with his earliest poetic translations and essays on the relationship between form and content in poetry (*Briefe über Poesie, Silbenmaß u. Sprache*). Later, together with his brother Friedrich, he founded the journal *Athenaeum* (Berlin 1798–1800), in which he launched a scathing critique against the fashionable Francophile literature of the day. In 1801, in Berlin, he delivered his *Vorlesungen über schöne Literatur u. Kunst*—a polemic against the Enlightenment and a reevaluation of medieval poetry—which gathered around him a circle of young Romantic poets.
He displayed a genuine talent for translating poetic works: 17 Shakespearean dramas (1797–1810), five plays by Calderón (*Spanisches Theater*, 1803–1809), other Romance poetry (*Blumensträuse italienischer, spanischer u. portugiesischer Poesie*, Berlin 1904), and, in part, Dante. After 1804, he traveled through Europe with Mme de Staël, extending his interests to the visual arts (later reflected in his *Vorlesungen*).
Schlegel, Friedrich von — Portrait.