Background

Frederic Hedge was born on December 12, 1805, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. He was the second child of Levi and Mary (Kneeland) Hedge.

Education

Showing an early talent for language, Frederic memorized the Eclogues of Virgil before he was seven years of age and much of Homer before he was ten. His father, professor of logic at Harvard, sent Frederic to Germany with George Bancroft in 1818, a boy of thirteen in the care of a youth of eighteen. He returned in 1822 and entered Harvard with advanced standing, graduating in 1825. After studying at the Divinity School, 1825-1829, he was ordained at West Cambridge (now Arlington), Massachusetts, on May 20, 1829.

Career

Frederic Hedge served as minister of Unitarian churches at West Cambridge, 1829-1835; Bangor, Maine, 1835-1850; Providence, Rhode Island, 1850-1856; and Brookline, Massachusetts, 1857-1872. He was editor of the Christian Examiner, 1857-1861; professor of ecclesiastical history in the Harvard Divinity School, 1857-1876, and an especially appointed instructor in ecclesiastical history for the year 1877-1878; and professor of German literature in Harvard College from 1872 until his retirement in 1884. He continued to live in Cambridge until his death.

In 1836, when Hedge joined Emerson and George Ripley in organizing a group of Transcendentalists, he was the only one of them who knew the German philosophical background of Transcendentalism at first hand. Recognizing Hedge’s leadership, the group made his visits from Bangor to Boston the occasion for calling meetings and referred to themselves as “The Hedge Club. ” Hedge’s enthusiasm for German philosophy passed first to Margaret Fuller, then to Ripley, and to James Freeman Clarke. By 1836 many other American scholars could have given the Transcendental group an understanding of German philosophy.

Hedge's ability as a creative writer was displaye in his hymns and lyrics and in his orations of the decade after 1872, particularly the Luther oration (published 1888) and those published in Ways of the Spirit and Other Essays (1877), but his chief service to literature was as a translator. His Prose Writers of Germany was published in 1848. This collection of translations, with critical introductions, exhibited not only breadth of reading but discerning appreciation and literary skill in the translations from his own hand. Together with his indefatigable effort in periodicals and in conversation, it introduced German literature into America. His appointment to the German professorship at Harvard was a somewhat tardy recognition of his scholarship and zeal.

In addition to the scores of articles which he contributed to periodicals and the books previously mentioned, Hedge published several volumes, including: Conservatism and Reform (1843); Christian Liturgy; For the Use of the Church (’853); Hymns for the Church of Christ (1853); Recent Inquiries in Theology (1860); Reason in Religion (1865) ; The Primeval World of Hebrew Tradition (1870); an edition of Goethe’s Faust (1882); Atheism in Philosophy (1884); Hours with German Classics (1886); Personality and Theism (1887); Martin Luther and Other Essays (1888); Metrical Translations ond Poems (1888), with Annis Lee Wister; and Sermons (1891).

Achievements

• Frederic Hedge was famous as a founder of the Transcendental Club, originally called Hedge's Club. Hedge’s unique service lay in bringing to it something of the very atmosphere of German thought. He was also one of the foremost scholars of German literature in the United States. His most noted single translation is the familiar English version of Luther’s "Ein feste Burg. ’’

Works

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  • Hours with German classics, by Frederic Henry Hedge

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • The Primeval World of Hebrew Tradition

    (Leopold is delighted to publish this classic book as part...)

  • Reason in Religion

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

  • Atheism in Philosophy, and Other Essays (Classic Reprint)

    (Messrs. Roberts Brothers Publications. FREDERIC HENRY HED...)

  • Hymns for the church of Christ. Edited by Rev. Frederic H. Hedge and Rev. Frederic D. Huntington. 3d thousand.
  • Recent inquiries in theology, by eminent English churchmen. Edited by Rev. Frederic H. Hedge

Religion

Hedge was president of the American Unitarian Association, 1859-1862, and all his life a powerful leader in the Unitarian movement. As editor of the Christian Examiner he espoused no cause, though he was frankly intolerant of attempts to organize the Unitarian societies into large associations; he frowned on any move to make a denomination out of the free churches. As professor at the Harvard Divinity School he objected to the audacities of the western Unitarians when he himself was complacently doubting personal immortality and relegating the whole realm of nature to the devil. He formulated neither his theology nor his philosophy, and because he did not conform to any one party he exerted an influence on all factions. No party in the church claimed him; in theology, as in philosophy, he belonged to no school.

Views

As a philosopher Hedge was neither Kantian nor Hegelian and avoided identifying himself with any one school of thought, but he was always with the idealists and intuitionalists against the realists and experimentalists.

Quotations: “The years in Germany gave me a thorough knowledge of the language, some acquaintance with its literature, and an early initiation in the realm of German idealism, then to our people an unknown world. ”

Connections

Frederic Hedge was married to Mary Kneeland, daughter of Doctor William Kneeland and grand-daughter of President Holyoke of Harvard, on January 15, 1801, at Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Father:

Lemuel Hedge

Mother:

Sarah (White) Hedge

Spouse:

Mary (Kneeland) Hedge

Daughter:

Caroline Hedge

Daughter:

Ellen Elizabeth (Hedge) Poor

Son:

Frederic Henry Hedge