Going to Berlin, Fichte found a friendly government, a numerous public for his lectures, and a stimulating circle of friends in the romanticists, the brothers Schlegel, Tieck, Schleiermacher, etc.  In the first years of his Berlin residence there appeared The Vocation of Man.  The Exclusive Commercial State, 1800; The Sun-clear Report to the Larger Public on the Essential Nature of the New Philosophy, and the Answer to Reinhold, 1801.  Three works, which were the outcome of his lectures and were published in the year 1806 (Characteristics of the Present Age, The Nature of the Scholar, Way to the Blessed Life or Doctrine of Religion), form a connected whole.  In the summer of 1805 Fichte filled a professorship at Erlangen, and later, after the outbreak of the war, he occupied for a short time a chair at Koenigsberg, finding a permanent university position at the foundation of the University of Berlin in 1810.  His glowing Addresses to the German Nation, 1808, which essentially aided in arousing the national spirit, have caused his name to live as one of the greatest of orators and most ardent of patriots in circles of the German people where his philosophical importance cannot be understood.  His death in 1814 was also a result of unselfish labor in the service of the Fatherland.  He succumbed to a nervous fever contracted from his wife, who, with self-sacrifice equal to his own, had shared in the care of the wounded, and who had brought the contagion back with her from the hospital.  On his monument is inscribed the beautiful text, “The teachers shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars that shine forever and ever.”  Forberg in his journal records this estimate:  The leading trait in Fichte’s character is his absolute integrity.  All his words are weighty and important.  His principles are stern and little modified by affability.  The spirit of his philosophy is proud and courageous, one which does not so much lead as possess us and carry us along.  His philosophemes are inquiries in which we see the truth arise before our eyes, and which just for this reason lay the foundations of science and conviction.

The philosopher’s son, Immanuel Hermann Fichte (his own name was Johann Gottlieb), wrote a biography of his father (1830; 2d ed., 1862), and supervised the publication of both the Posthumous Works (1834-35, 3 vols.) and the Collected Works (1845-46, 8 vols.).  The simple and luminous Facts of Consciousness of 1811, or 1817 (not the lecture of 1813 with the same title), is especially valuable as an introduction to the system.  Among the many redactions of the Wissenschaftslehre, the epoch-making Foundation of the whole Science of Knowledge, 1794, with the two Introductions to the Science of Knowledge, 1797, takes the first rank, while of the practical works the most important are the Foundation of Natural Right according to the Principles of the Science of Knowledge, 1796, and the System of the Science of Ethics according to the Principles of the Science of Knowledge, 1798, and next to these the Lectures on the Theory of the State, 1820 (delivered in 1813).[1]