Schwegler, ALBERT, theologian and philosopher, born at Michelbach in Württemberg, 10th February 1819. He studied theology at Tübingen, and was profoundly influenced by the writings of Hegel, Strauss, and especially Baur. His striking treatise on Montanism (1841) and many contributions to Zeller's Theologische Jahrbücher brought him into collision with the church authorities in Württemberg, and caused him to abandon the clerical calling. In 1843 he started the Jahrbücher der Gegenwart, and habilitated as privat-docent in philosophy and classical philology at Tübingen, where in 1848 he became extra-ordinary professor of Classical Philology, later ordinary professor of History, and died 5th January 1857.
His other theological works were Das Nachapostolische Zeitalter (2 vols. 1846)—a hastily written and uncritical exaggeration of the Baur hypothesis, Christianity being represented as a mere outgrowth of Ebionitism—and editions of the Clementine homilies (1847) and the Church History of Eusebius (2 vols. 1852). More valu- able was his contribution to the history of philosophy : a translation with commentary of Aristotle's Metaphysics (4 vols. 1847-48); the Geschichte der Philosophie (1848; Eng. trans. by Dr Hutchison Stirling, 1872), a masterly sketch; and the posthumous Geschichte der Griech. Philosophie (ed. by Köstlin, 1859), in which he broke away from his earlier Hegelianism. He left unfinished a Röm. Geschichte (3 vols. 1853-58; 2d ed. 1867-72; continued by Clason, vols. iv. and v. 1873-76).