Jena Romanticism

Around 1798, in the small university town of Jena, a few very young friends founded a review and decided that poetry must absorb philosophy, science and religion. Novalis set out in search of a blue flower seen in a dream and invented the very symbol of romanticism, Tieck wrote a tale in which a man discovers he has married his sister unknowingly, Brentano and Arnim collected German folk songs. Hoffmann, a little later, would turn a wooden nutcracker into a prince, and the automaton into a source of dread.

works 5

• TaleThe Fair-Haired EckbertDer blonde EckbertLudwig Tieck · 1797A tale of early German Romanticism, in which a man withdrawn deep in a forest listens to his wife tell of her childhood, one evening, in front of their only friend.LiteraturePublic domain
• NovelHenry von OfterdingenHeinrich von OfterdingenNovalis · 1802A novel of apprenticeship from early German Romanticism, left unfinished, in which a boy sets out on the roads of the Middle Ages after dreaming of a flower.LiteraturePublic domain
• PoetryDes Knaben WunderhornClemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim · 1806not translated into EnglishThree volumes of German folk songs gathered at the beginning of the nineteenth century by two poets who remade them as much as they collected them.LiteraturePublic domain
• Short storiesIsabella of EgyptIsabella von ÄgyptenAchim von Arnim · 1812A fantastic tale of German Romanticism, in which a Gypsy orphan from Ghent, a mandrake and a dead soldier cross paths with the youth of the future Charles V.Literature
• TaleThe Nutcracker and the Mouse KingNußknacker und MausekönigE.T.A. Hoffmann · 1816A Christmas tale of German Romanticism, in which the toys of a bourgeois drawing room do battle with mice while the house sleeps.LiteraturePublic domain