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Humboldt (WILHELM VON a German)

WILHELM VON, a German philologist, brother of Alexander; born in Potsdam, June 22, 1767. He was educated at Göttingen, and devoted to philological and literary studies; but he had strong practical gifts and elevated social sympathies. In 1789 he visited Paris to study the French Revolution, with which he sympathized; from 1802 to 1819 he was in active official life; minister to Vienna, member of the Privy Council, Secretary of State, ambassador to London, etc.; finally quitting it in disgust at the corruption he would not share. Meantime and later he wrote critiques on Goethe and Homer, and scientific and literary monographs, and translated Æschylus and Pindar. His main work in philology is "On the Kawi Language of the Javanese," but he made other valuable studies of primitive dialects. He died in Tegel, near Berlin, April 8, 1835.