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Friedrich Schlegel

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Karl Wilhelm Friedrich (after 1814: von) Schlegel ( SHLAY-gəl; German: [ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈʃleːɡl̩]; 10 March 1772 – 12 January 1829) was a German literary critic, philosopher, and Indologist. With his older brother, August Wilhelm Schlegel, he was one of the main figures of Jena Romanticism.

Born into a fervently Protestant family, Schlegel rejected religion as a young man in favor of atheism and individualism. He entered university to study law but instead focused on classical literature. He began a career as a writer and lecturer, and founded journals such as Athenaeum. In 1808, Schlegel returned to Christianity as a married man with both him and his wife being baptized into the Catholic Church. This conversion ultimately led to his estrangement from family and old friends. He moved to Austria in 1809, where he became a diplomat and journalist in service of Klemens von Metternich, the Foreign Minister of the Austrian Empire. Schlegel died in 1829, at the age of 56.

Schlegel was a promoter of the Romantic movement and inspired Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Adam Mickiewicz and Kazimierz Brodziński. The first to notice what became known as Grimm's law, Schlegel was a pioneer in Indo-European studies, comparative linguistics, and morphological typology, publishing in 1819 the first theory linking the Indo-Iranian and German languages under the Aryan group. Some of his works were set to music by Schubert, Mendelssohn and Schumann.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

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Truly Aristotle, who had his surname from Stagira, and Xenocrates of Chalcedon, his companion, through the genius, almost Divine, which Nature had put into Aristotle, knowing this end by means of the Socratic method, with the Academic file, as it were, reduced Moral Philosophy to perfection, and especially Aristotle. And since Aristotle began to reason while walking hither and thither, they were called, he, I say…
Dante Alighieri, The Banquet
States what Friedrich Schlegel is; the author is tied to Friedrich Schlegel in the knowledge graph.
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Like him he was endowed with great personal charm, and was enamoured of all that opened new regions to intellectual curiosity or gave refinement to sensual pleasure. In his public as well as in his private behaviour, he was reckless of what the Church and its doctrines might promise or threaten; and equally so, his enemies declared, of the dictates of common humanity. Hostile eyes detected in the green clothes which…
Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri
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Lastly, German philosophy, that most complicated, but at the same time most sure thermometer of the development of the German mind, had declared for the middle class, when Hegel in his "Philosophy of Law" pronounced Constitutional Monarchy to be the final and most perfect form of government. In other words, he proclaimed the approaching advent of the middle classes of the country to political power. His school…
Friedrich Engels, Revolution and Counter-Revolution
Close in meaning to Friedrich Schlegel; the term itself is not named.
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Friedrich Schlegel

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