Friedrich Schlegel’s essay Über das Studium der griechischen Poesie appeared in print (though completed earlier), helping frame early German Romanticism’s contrast between ancient and modern literature and establishing a new, historically oriented mode of criticism.
Schlegel publishes the Lyceum (Kritische) Fragments, inaugurating the early Romantic fragment as a programmatic critical form—aphoristic, self-reflexive, and designed to provoke ongoing thought rather than close a system.
August Wilhelm and Friedrich Schlegel establish the Berlin-based journal Athenäum (1798–1800), which becomes the central outlet for the Jena circle’s early Romantic theory, criticism, and manifesto-like fragments.
Only one volume of Schlegel’s planned larger work on ancient literature is published as Geschichte der Poesie der Griechen und Römer, consolidating his historically grounded approach to criticism that fed into early Romantic theorizing.
The Athenäum-Fragmente first appear in June 1798 in Athenäum. Across hundreds of aphorisms (with a large share by Friedrich Schlegel), the fragments articulate core early Romantic ideas, including the open-ended, “progressive” character of Romantic poetry.
Schlegel publishes the novel Lucinde, notorious for its experimental form and frank treatment of love and sexuality; it became a flashpoint for arguments about Romantic aesthetics, subjectivity, and the relation between life and art.
Schlegel’s programmatic text “On Philosophy. To Dorothea” appears in Athenäum (vol. 2, 1799), linking Romantic criticism to larger philosophical questions and to the circle’s collaborative intellectual life.
Schlegel publishes the fragment-collection Ideen in Athenäum (1800), extending the manifesto-like fragment practice toward broader claims about art, criticism, and the unfinished character of Romantic thinking.
Schlegel’s Gespräch über die Poesie (1800) stages Romantic theory as a social dialogue and advances ideas about modern poetry, mythology, and the “romantic” as an element that can traverse genres rather than a single genre label.
Schlegel publishes Über die Unverständlichkeit (1800), a key early Romantic critical statement defending challenging, self-reflexive writing against demands for immediate clarity, and reframing “understanding” as an active interpretive task.
After publishing three volumes across 1798–1800, Athenäum ends, marking the close of its brief but foundational run as a primary platform for early German Romantic manifestos, fragments, reviews, and theoretical experiments.
August Wilhelm and Friedrich Schlegel publish Charakteristiken und Kritiken (1801), gathering and extending the new Romantic mode of critical “characterization” and evaluation into a major book-format statement of the movement’s critical practice.
Schlegel publishes the tragedy Alarcos (1802), an experiment associated with Romantic interest in Spanish themes and forms; it became part of the period’s debates about modern drama, imitation, and innovation beyond classical models.
Friedrich Schlegel and the Early German Romantic Manifestos (1797–1808)
