Friedrich Schlegel

Born into a Protestant household in 1772, Schlegel ditched law school for classical literature and spent his twenties as an atheist critic building the Romantic movement alongside his brother August Wilhelm. He founded journals like Athenaeum and shaped the era's literary consciousness, influencing Coleridge and later Polish Romantics. In 1808, married, he converted to Catholicism - a choice that severed ties with the circle that had defined him. A year later he moved to Austria and became a diplomat and journalist under Metternich, the Foreign Minister. He also pioneered Indo-European linguistics, spotting what would be called Grimm's law and publishing the first theory linking Indo-Iranian and German languages in 1819. He died in 1829 at fifty-six, his late work set to music by Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Schumann.