In 1846-47 Schlegel’s German works were issued in twelve volumes by Booking. There is also an edition of his Oeuvres, écrites en français, and of his Opuscula Latina.

SCHLEGEL, Johann Elias (1718—1749), a German dramatic writer, was born at Meissen on the 28th January 1718. He was educated at Schulpforta and at the university of Leipsic. In 1743, having finished his studies, he became private secretary to his relative, Von Spener, the Saxon ambassador at the Danish court. Afterwards he was made professor extraordinary at the academy of Soröe, where he died on the 13th August 1749. Schlegel was a contributor to the Bremischen Beiträge, and for some time, while he was living in Denmark, he edited a weekly periodical, Der Fremde. He was also known as a writer of clever poetical epistles. Incomparably his best works, however, are his dramas, which did much to prepare the way for the dramatic achievements of Lessing, by whom his genius was warmly appreciated. He wrote two lively and well-constructed comedies, the Triumph der guten Frauen and the Stumme Schönheit, the latter in alexandrines, the former in prose. Hermann and Kanut (in alexandrines) are generally considered his best tragedies.

His works were edited after his death by his brother, J. H. Schlegel, who had a considerable reputation as a writer on Danish history. Another brother, J. Adolf Schlegel, an eminent preacher, and author of some volumes of verse, was the father of August Wilhelm and Friedrich von Schlegel.

SCHLEGEL, Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von (1772- 1829), known chiefly as an historian of literature, was the brother of August Wilhelm von Schlegel. He was born at Hanover on the 10th March 1772. Having studied at Göttingen and Leipsic, he attracted some attention by a book on the Griechen und Römer (1797), which was praised by Heyne. This work was soon followed by his Geschichte der Poesie der Griechen und Römer. At Jena, where he lectured as a privat-docent at the university, he contributed to the Athenaeum many striking critical articles, and a number of lyrical poems which were afterwards included in a volume entitled Gedichte. Here also he wrote Lucinde, an unfinished romance, which was held by some of the best of his contemporaries to be of a deeply immoral tendency, and Alαrcos, a tragedy, in which he attempted without much success to combine romantic and classical elements. In 1802 he went to Paris, where he edited Europa, lectured on philosophy, and carried on Oriental studies, some results of which he embodied in a well-known book, Geber die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier. In 1803 he and his wife joined the Roman Church, and from this time he became more and more opposed to the principles of political and religious freedom. He went to Vienna in 1808, and in the following year was engaged as imperial court secretary at the headquarters of the archduke Charles. At a later period he was for some time councillor of legation in the Austrian embassy at the Frankfort diet, but in 1818 he returned to Vienna. Meanwhile he had published two series of lectures, Ueber die neuere Geschichte (1811) and Geschichte der alten und neuen Literatur (1815). After his return to Vienna from Frankfort he edited Concordia, and began the issue of his Sämmtliche Werke. He also delivered lectures, which were republished in his Philosophie des Lebens (1828) and in his Philosophie der Geschichte (1829). He died on the 11th January 1829 at Dresden, where he was delivering the course of lectures which appeared in 1830 under the title Philosophische Vorlesungen, insbesondere über die Philosophie der Sprache und des Wortes. His own collection of his works included ten volumes, and to this number five volumes were added after his death. A permanent place in the history of German literature belongs to Friedrich Schlegel and his brother August Wilhelm as the critical leaders of the Romantic school, which derived from them most of its governing ideas as to the characteristics of the Middle Ages, and as to the methods of literary expression. In their writings, too, there is the fullest and most impressive statement of the mystical spiritual doctrines of the Romantic school. Of the two brothers, August Wilhelm did the highest permanent service to his countrymen by his translations from Shakespeare and Calderon. The best of Friedrich’s works is his Geschichte der alten und neuen Literatur, in which was presented for the first time a systematic account of the development of European literature as a whole.

Friedrich Schlegel’s wife, Dorothea, a daughter of Moses Mendelssohn, was born at Berlin about the year 1770, and died at Frankfort in 1839. She was an eccentric but remarkably clever woman, and wrote or edited several works, issued by her husband,— the unfinished romance Florentin (1801), the first volume of the Sammlung romantischer Dichtungen des Mittelalters (2 vols., 1804), and Bother und Maller (1805). By her first marriage she had a son, Philip Veit, who became one of the most eminent painters of his day in Germany.