Frederick Henry Hedge (1805-August 21, 1890) was a New England Unitarian minister and Transcendentalist. He was a founder of the Transcendental Club and active in the development of Transcendentalism.
Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Hedge traveled to Germany and studied in music before graduating from Harvard in 1825. His knowledge of German was to serve him well both in hymnody (he translated Luther's "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" into English for the first time) and in philosophy, where it allowed him a greater familiarity with Kant than most of the Americans of his day.
After graduating as valedictorian, he enrolled in Harvard Divinity School, where he met his intimate friend Ralph Waldo Emerson. He was central to the development of Transcendentalism in the 1830s, but became alienated from the group's more extreme positions in the 1840s and did not publish in The Dial, the chief Transcendentalist review.
After graduating from the Divinity School, Hedge was ordained as a Unitarian minister. He served as a minister in Maine, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. From 1872 until 1882 he taught German literature at Harvard.
External links
- Hedge article from Dictionary of Unitarian Universalist Biography online
- Partial text of Hedge's book Reason in Religion from American Unitarian Conference
