258n. Friedrich Schlegel to Schleiermacher in Berlin: Jena, 14 February 1800 [*]
[Jena, 14 February 1800]
. . . Although I wanted to write you extensively today about the philosophical journal, [1] which in my opinion we need to undertake together quite soon, I have something else to speak with you about today, something more urgent. —
To wit, it is for a quite specific reason that I myself concur with the request Dorothea made of you [2] — of course, it goes without saying: if it is possible for you to fulfill it. — And for the following reason.
Since we have been here, Caroline has been privately separated from my brother and linked with another friend. [3] I have in this regard behaved perhaps even more discreetly than I should, though on a recent occasion I found myself prompted to take Wilhelm’s side and in so doing to forfeit to a considerable degree Caroline’s friendship. I basically saw that coming, though now I do intend to do and risk everything I can in order to make Wilhelm free, completely free. —
You can easily enough see that in such revolutionary circumstances and among such revolutionary people, almost the most important need is to be free with respect to financial considerations, for the situation could well arise that we might even have to leave here very quickly.
I am writing you this with the same unconditional trust that I have always quite naturally had toward you, and I think I hardly need add that I have confided a sacred secret to you that only such a situation could prompt me to reveal even to you. . . .
Notes
[*] Sources: Krisenjahre 1:8–9 (frag.); KGA V/3 384–85; KFSA 25:65–66. — Though undated, this letter refers to Dorothea Veit’s letter to Schleiermacher on the same day (letter 258m). Back.
[1] The plan to publish a critical journal quite apart from that which Fichte was suggesting, not least to replace the lost forum of the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung; see Schelling’s declaration in the Intelligenzblatt of the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, Saturday, 2 November 1799 (letter 252d), and Wilhelm’s similar declaration on 13 November 1799 (letter 255a). Discussions of these plans recur in coming letters; see esp. Rudolf Haym’s discussion of the Romantics’ Jahrbücher project. Back.
[2] The request for a covert payment of debt and an accompanying loan based on Schleiermacher’s own credit with Simon Veit; see Dorothea’s letter to Schleiermacher on this same day (letter 258m). Back.
[3] That is, since September/October 1799 (Johann Georg Pendel, Junges Paar auf einem Sofa, zu einem jungen Mann aufblickend, der gerade das Zimmer betritt [1803]; Herzog August Bibliothek; Museums./Signatur Graph. A1: 2017):
Translation © 2013 Doug Stott