I have found a quote which vindicates my early suppositions regarding Fichte and Hegel: Will Durant in The Story of Philosophy comments, quoting Schopenhauer: “Fichte and Schelling took Kant and excogitated magnificent spider-webs of metaphysics. ‘But the height of the audacity in serving up pure nonsense, in stringing together senseless and extravagant mazes of words, such as had previously been known only in madhouses, was finally reached in Hegel, and became the instrument of the most bare-faced general mystification that has ever taken place, with a result which will appear fabulous to posterity, and will remain as a monument to German stupidity.’”