This first comprehensive study of Friedrich Schleiermacher’s work from the perspective of gender theory examines the development of his thought with regard to the gender debate of his time.The study takes the position that Schleiermacher’s concept of the egalitarian complementarity of genders is of fundamental significance for his philosophical ethics as well as for his theology.The analysis of central texts from Schleiermacher’s work demonstrates how his concept of gender influences his anthropology and his theology of marriage and how the linking of this gender concept and his theory of religion leads to a feminine coding of the religious which makes Schleiermacher the theoretical precursor of a feminisation of religion in the context of the 19th century bourgeois gender order.