Erich Schmidt (historian)

Erich Schmidt (historian) in 1917

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

Biography

He was the son of Oskar Schmidt. He studied Germanic philology and literary history at Graz, Jena, and Strassburg, established himself as privatdozent at Würzburg in 1875, became 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.

Devoted almost exclusively to the investigation of modern literature, especially of the classical period, he published:

• Richardson, Rousseau, und Goethe (1875)
• Lenz und Klinger (1878)
• Heinrich Leopold Wagner (1879)
• Beiträge zur Kenntnis der Klopstockschen Jugendlyrik (1880)
• Charakteristiken (1st series 1880; 2d series 1900)
• A biography of Lessing (2d ed. 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; 3d ed. 1894) which was discovered by him in Dresden.

Notes

References

•  Gilman, D. C.; Thurston, H. T.; Colby, F. M., eds. (1905). "Schmidt, Erich". New International Encyclopedia (1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead.