SCHLEGEL, AUGUST WILHELM VON. - German critic, philologist and poet, b. at Hannover on 5 Nov. 1767, d. at Bonn on 12 May 1845.
He first studied theology at Göttingen, which he soon left for literature. From 1795 in Jena (where he was a professor in 1798) he collaborated on Schiller's Horen and Musenalmanach with his first poetic translations and some essays on the relationship between form and content in poetry (Briefe über Poesie, Silbenmass u. Sprache); then with his brother Friedrich he founded the journal Athenaeum (Berlin 1798-1800), where he conducted a demolishing criticism against the fashionable Frenchified literature. In 1801 he gave in Berlin the Vorlesungen über schöne Literatur u. Kunst - a polemic against the Enlightenment and a revaluation of medieval poetry - gathering around himself a group of young Romantic poets. He revealed a true talent in translating poetic works: 17 Shakespearean dramas (1797-1810), 5 dramas by Calderón (Spanisches Theater, 1803-1809), other Romance poetry (Blumensträusse italienischer, spanischer u. portugiesischer Poesie, Berlin 1904) and, in part, Dante. After 1804 he travelled with Mme de Staël across Europe, turning his interest also to the figurative arts (whence later the Vorlesungen über Theorie u. Geschichte der bildenden Künste, Berlin 1827), and he stayed with her in the famous villa of Coppet, centre of the new European culture. In Staël's attempt to make the new phase of German spiritual life known to the French he took part by fighting against the invasion of French classicism (Comparaison entre la Phèdre de Racine et celle d'Euripide, 1807). In Vienna in 1808 he gave those Vorlesungen über dramatische Kunst u. Literatur (Heidelberg 1808-11), in which he codified the concept of "Romantic art" (art of nostalgia, yearning for God, for the mystery of the Universe; union of life and death, of sensuality and spirituality), that is, the art of Shakespeare and of the Spaniards, and opposed it to that of "classical art" (art of possession and serene joy, harmonious legislation of the world, sharing in the autonomous perfection of nature), the art of the Greeks, Romans, French, Italians; this division opened the way to the literary quarrels of the early 19th century. After 1818 he was at the University of Bonn and, as the first professor of Sanskrit in Germany, he introduced, with the journal Indische Bibliothek (1823-30) and with the editing and publication of Indian works, the scientific study of this literature. In Berichtigung einiger Missendungen (1827) he set out his aversion to Catholicism. His last writings, especially Wendt's Musenallmanach (1832), are violent satires against his former Romantic companions, Schiller, Goethe and his own brother Friedrich. His poetic production is mediocre (Gedichte, 1800; Poetische Werke, 1811; the drama Jon [1803], on models of Euripides). A spirit more imitative than creative, but one that knew how to penetrate into the inner being of other poets, he gave precious critical contributions and pointed out new paths in the field of aesthetics. Too far, however, did he push his opposition to the 18th century, losing sight of nature in order to adhere to the Fichtean concept of the work of art as the exclusive emanation of the subjective I.
BIBL. ed.: the only complete one is the old edition by Ed. Böcking (12 vols., Leipzig 1846-47). Studies: O. Wassermeier, Die Kunstlehre A. W. S.'s und ihr Verhältnis zu Kunst und Schillers Ästhetik, ibid. 1923; Comtesse J. de Pange, A. G. S. et Mme de Staël d'après des documents inédits, Paris 1938; B. v. Brentano, A. W. S., Stuttgart 1943.
Alba Cori