August Wilhelm Schlegel

• To this day August Wilhelm Schlegel (1767–1845) has received far less attention among academic researchers than has his brilliant younger brother Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) and undeservedly so. He was assuredly the most important conduit of the thought behind German Romanticism and the body of knowledge it constituted with the educated middle-class and the academic landscape of his contemporaries. As a translator, literary-critic and philologist he brought the several cultures of Europe as well as the culture of India closer to the German-speaking world. Conversely, his work also set trends and established standards across Europe that mirrored the intercultural discursive articulations of the romantic movement. Schlegel’s capacity as a communicator is not only revealed in his copious lecture transcriptions and in his translations – his translations of Shakespeare remain superlative to this day – and in his abundant literary reviews, but in his correspondence as well. Over the course of his life Schlegel corresponded with hundreds of artists, authors, scholars and political figures. One of the most exceedingly multi-faceted authors and scholars, the scope of whose erudition reaches into nearly every existing field, is to be discovered in August Wilhelm Schlegel. He stands among Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Johann Wilhelm Ritter and Henrich Steffens as one of the most definitive scholars and specialists produced by the German Early Romanticism movement.