1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Schmidt, Heinrich Julian

SCHMIDT, HEINRICH JULIAN (1818-1886), German journalist and historian of literature, was born at Marienwerder in East Prussia on the 7th of March 1818, and after studying history and philosophy at the university of Königsberg was appointed, in 1842, to a mastership in the Luisenstadt Realschule in Berlin. In 1847 he joined the editorial staff of the Grenzboten in Leipzig, and in the following year became, with Gustav Freytag, joint owner of that periodical. In 1861 he removed to Berlin as editor-in-chief of the Berliner allgemeine Zeitung, and in 1878 was rewarded for the journalistic services rendered to the government, by a pension from the emperor William I. He died at Berlin on the 27th of March 1886.

Julian Schmidt's principal contributions to literary history are Geschichte der Romantik im Zeitalter der Revolution und Restauration (1848); Geschichte der deutschen Nationalliteratur im 19. Jahrhundert (1853); Geschichte des geistigen Lebens in Deutschland von Leibniz bis auf Lessings Tod (1861-1863). These works subsequently appeared as Geschichte der deutschen Literatur von Leibniz bis auf unsere Zeit (4 vols., 1886-1896); Schmidt also wrote a Geschichte der französischen Literatur seit der Revolution (1857), and a biography of Schiller (1859).