Appointed professor at Jena in 1798, August Wilhelm von Schlegel was a poet, playwright, satirist, translator, literary critic, periodical editor, and propogandist. With his brother Friedrich he edited the periodical The Athenæum. His translations of Shakespeare's plays brought the English dramatist to a broad German audience. Schlegel's lectures beginning in Jena and continuing over the next fourteen years in Berlin and Vienna spread the Romantic aesthetic throughout Europe.