Erich Schmidt (20 June 1853, in Jena – 29 April 1913, in Berlin) was a German historian of literature.

Biography

He was the son of a zoologist Oskar Schmidt. He studied Germanic philology and literary history at

Graz Graz (; sl, Gradec) is the capital city of the Austrian state of Styria and second-largest city in Austria after Vienna. As of 1 January 2021, it had a population of 331,562 (294,236 of whom had principal-residence status). In 2018, the popul ...

, Jena, and Strassburg, established himself as

privatdozent ''Privatdozent'' (for men) or ''Privatdozentin'' (for women), abbreviated PD, P.D. or Priv.-Doz., is an academic title conferred at some European universities, especially in German-speaking countries, to someone who holds certain formal qualific ...

at Würzburg in 1875, became a professor at Strassburg in 1877, at Vienna in 1880, and director of the Goethe archive at Weimar in 1885. Thence he was called to Berlin in 1887, to succeed Wilhelm Scherer in the chair of German language and literature.Schmidt, Franz Erich
In: Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB). Band 23, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2007, , S. 182 f. From 1907 onward, he served as president of the Goethe Society.Schmidt - Theyer
edited by Walther Killy

Published works

Devoted almost exclusively to the investigation of modern literature, being the distinguished author of works involving writers and German literature of the 18th and 19th century, he published: * ''Richardson, Rousseau, und Goethe'' (1875) – Samuel Richardson, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. * ''Lenz und Klinger'' (1878) – Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz, Friedrich Maximilian Klinger. * ''Heinrich Leopold Wagner'' (1879) – Heinrich Leopold Wagner. * ''Beiträge zur Kenntnis der Klopstockschen Jugendlyrik'' (1880). * ''Komödien vom Studentenleben aus dem sechzehnten und siebzehnten Jahrhundert. Vortrag gehalten auf der Trier Philologenversammlung.'' Leipzig 1880.
Digitalisat
* ''Charakteristiken'' (1st series 1880; 2d series 1900). * A biography of

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (, ; 22 January 1729 – 15 February 1781) was a philosopher, dramatist, publicist and art critic, and a representative of the Enlightenment era. His plays and theoretical writings substantially influenced the developmen ...

, titled ''Lessing: Geschichte seines Lebens und seiner Schriften'' (2d edition 1899). He edited: * Two volumes of the ''Schriften der Goethe-Gesellschaft'' (Weimar, 1886 and 1893) * ''Faust'', for the Weimar edition * ''Goethe's Faust in ursprünglicher Gestalt'' (Goethe's ''Faust'' in its original form; 3rd edition, 1894) which was discovered by him in Dresden.

Notes

References

* 1853 births 1913 deaths Writers from Jena People from Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach 19th-century German historians German literary historians German male non-fiction writers University of Graz alumni University of Jena alumni University of Strasbourg alumni Academic staff of the University of Strasbourg Academic staff of the University of Vienna Academic staff of the Humboldt University of Berlin Members of the Prussian Academy of Sciences 20th-century German historians Goethe scholars {{Germany-historian-stub