Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder’s Herzensergiessungen eines kunstliebenden Klosterbruders (associated with Ludwig Tieck) argued for a spiritually serious, inward-looking approach to art. Its 1797 publication helped set up themes that later Jena Romantics would expand: emotion, faith, and admiration for early German masters instead of strict classic rules.
Friedrich Schlegel’s essay “On the Study of Greek Poetry” was completed earlier but first published in January 1797. It sharpened the contrast between ancient and modern literature, a debate that became central to early Romantic theory (how modern writing could be great without copying antiquity).
In 1798, August Wilhelm von Schlegel began teaching at the University of Jena, where philosophers and writers were already in intense debate. His teaching and criticism helped make Jena a practical meeting point for the “early Romantics,” linking literary experimentation with university life.
In 1798, August Wilhelm and Friedrich Schlegel launched Athenaeum, a journal that became a major outlet for early German Romantic ideas. It published criticism, short “fragments,” and experiments in style that argued for creativity, genre-mixing, and the importance of individual genius.
From about 1798 to 1804, a group centered in Jena developed what is often treated as the first phase of German literary Romanticism. Writers such as Tieck, the Schlegel brothers, and Novalis connected poetry with philosophy and religious feeling, and used criticism as a creative act rather than only judgment.
In 1799, theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher published On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers. The book defended religion as a deep human experience rather than only rules or proofs, reinforcing Romantic interest in inner life, individuality, and feeling as legitimate forms of knowledge.
Friedrich Schlegel’s Lucinde appeared in 1799 as part of an ambitious, unfinished novel project. Its mixed forms—letters, dialogues, aphorisms—modeled a key Romantic idea: the novel could be a space where storytelling and literary theory happen at the same time.
In 1800, Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg) published Hymnen an die Nacht, a cycle of poems that treats night as a symbol for spiritual depth and transformation. First published in the final issue of Athenaeum, it became one of the best-known poetic achievements of early German Romanticism.
Clemens Brentano’s Godwi was published in 1801 after being written during the Jena period (1798–99). The novel’s deliberate variety of forms (prose, poetry, dialogue) fit the early Romantic push toward “open” works that resist one fixed genre or single meaning.
By 1804, the Jena circle had largely dispersed, ending the movement’s most concentrated early phase in that city. A “second phase” of German Romanticism soon developed in Heidelberg, with stronger attention to the Middle Ages, folklore, and the cultural meaning of the German past.
In Heidelberg, Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim planned a collection of older German songs as a way to preserve and renew cultural memory. Their work reflected a shift from Jena’s philosophical emphasis toward collecting and reshaping popular traditions (songs, tales, and legends) as national culture.
The first volume of Des Knaben Wunderhorn appeared in late 1805 (often dated on the title page as 1806). It helped define Heidelberg Romanticism by bringing “folk” materials into literary culture, even as editors sometimes revised texts to fit Romantic ideals.
In 1808, the remaining two volumes of Des Knaben Wunderhorn were published, completing the three-volume collection. The project became a landmark of Heidelberg Romanticism and strongly influenced later writers and composers by treating song and oral tradition as serious cultural sources.
From April to August 1808, the Heidelberg Romantics published the Zeitung für Einsiedler (“Newspaper for Hermits”). It served as a public forum for their aesthetic and cultural arguments, and it shows how Romanticism increasingly fought its battles in print culture, not only private circles.
On 20 December 1812, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm published the first volume of Kinder- und Hausmärchen (86 tales). It reflected Romantic-era belief that traditional stories mattered for language, culture, and identity—and it brought folklore collection to a much larger reading public.
In 1815, the Grimms published the second volume of the first edition, adding 70 more tales. Together, the 1812/1815 edition helped cement the Heidelberg-era turn to folklore as a lasting legacy of German Romanticism, extending its influence well beyond 1835.
German Romanticism: Jena, Heidelberg, and the Early Movement (1790–1835)