The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Hedge, Frederic Henry

HEDGE, Frederic Henry, American scholar; b. Cambridge, Mass., 12 Dec, 1805; d. there, 21 Aug, 1890. He studied in Germany 1815-23, was later graduated from Harvard and Harvard divinity school, and after holding Unitarian pastorates in Bangor, Me., Providence, R. I., and Brookline, Mass., was professor of German at Harvard University (1872-81). Deeply read in philosophy, ecclesiastical history, and German literature, he was a finished writer and a much admired orator, and ranked as perhaps the foremost German literary scholar in the United States. Among his writings are ‘Reason in Religion’ (1865); ‘The Primeval World of Hebrew Tradition’ (1870); ‘Martin Luther and Other Essays’ (1888), etc. His ‘Prose Writers of Germany’ (1848) is a standard work. He translated poems from the German and wrote numerous hymns for the Unitarian Church.