Life Of Novalis

The Life Of Novalis

A biographical sketch by Walter Hedderich Preface I got interested in the biography of Friedrich von Hardenberg, the poet Novalis, some twenty years ago, inspired by an American friend. There was the romantic poet in the middle of Goethe's era, whose life itself is romantic to a high degree. We were thinking of producing some kind of dramatic treatment or script for a film maybe. So I started to collect some material and to compose the following text – on behalf of said friend in English although my mother tongue is German. The drama never resulted.

Childhood The family von Hardenberg can be traced back into the twelfth century, belonging to the old nobility of Niedersachsen. After a division of the property in the seventeenth century, Novalis great-grandfather received among others the estate Oberwiederstedt, a former monastery to which after the secularization a manor had been added. The main entrance of this building was closed by a wall of bricks, one of the forefathers had it done after his bride, whom he had expected on the doorstep was struck dead by a flash of lightning on the very spot. Our poet was born here on the 2nd of May in 1772 and baptised Georg Philipp Friedrich. His father was Heinrich Ulrich Erasmus von Hardenberg, who had been active in mining, then in military service and had finally retired to the supervision of the estate. His first wife had died young, having considered this a punishment by God, he had changed his so far worldly lifestyle completely and became aligned with the „Herrnhuter Bruedergemeinde“, a pietistic brotherhood within the protestants. His second wife was Auguste Bernhardine von Boelzig, she bore him eleven children, of which Novalis was the second oldest and his oldest son. Only one of them, a son, should outlive her. As a child, Novalis was quiet, weak and in apprehension behind his brothers and sisters. In his ninth year he got seriously ill of dysintery, but showed after recovery great talents and eagerness in learning. Some years later he was given to the mentioned parish for education where he stayed until he refused the confirmation into the parish. Around the age of fifteen he lived for one year at the house of his uncle Friedrich Wilhelm von Hardenberg in Lucklum near Braunschweig, who was a member of the Deutschritterorden (Order of the German Knights) and principal 1

of their belongings there. The uncle led a sociable life in the style of the ancien règime and owned a library with the literature of the time. In the beginning of 1785 the family had left the estate and moved to Weissenfels, as the father was appointed director of the salt-works in Artern, Koesen and Duerrenberg. The general lifestyle had not changed much, the children have mainly been together with their mother, among themselves or with their tutor. In May, 1789 Novalis sent letters expressing his admiration to the poet Gottfried August Buerger, sent some own poems to him and finally met him as Buerger was on a visit to his sister in a nearby village.

Studies Eighteen years old, he was sent to the gymnasium in Eisleben in June 1790; he seemed to have lived in the house of the headmaster Jani, a respected paedagogue. The lessons consisted of Greek and Latin language, thirty-five a week; among the authors read were Cicero, Virgil, Horaz, Ovid, Seneca, Xenophon, Demosthenes, Pindar and Homer. Until then, Novalis had written more than a hundred poems, mainly epigonisms of current styles; there are also attempts in prose and drama and poetical translations of classical authors. Due to the sudden death of Jani in October of that year he left the school in Eisleben and was accepted in the same month to the university of Jena. Here, the outstanding teaching personalities were Reinhold, who lectured on Kants philosophy and Schiller, who was professor for history. Novalis got interested in philosophy, although he did not penetrate the subject thoroughly, as he later confessed. He attended the lectures of Schiller on the history of the european states and on the crusades. Schiller's personality impressed him strongly and he got acquainted with him. The law studies he came for were left aside, student activities like fencing occupied him more. His interests laid in philosopy, history and poetry, all things far from a bread earning reality. He met Herder, who had influenced Goethe in his youth and was now superintendent of the protestant church in Weimar. In April 1791, his poem „Klagen eines Juenglings“ (Mournings Of A Young Man) was published in „Neuer Teutscher Merkur“, a periodical edited by Christoph Martin Wieland, as an example of worthwhile production by the young generation. His father finally asked Schiller to use his influence on Novalis to point out the usefulness of law studies for actual life to him, which the latter did with success and through further parental guidance he was gently forced to change to the university of Leipzig, which he did in October 1791, willing to devote himself to his studies. Leipzig, a city of thirty thousand inhabitants, was still the little Paris which Goethe had experienced thirty years earlier. Novalis brother Erasmus (born 1774) joined him there in the beginning of 1792 and together they 2

preferred the social life to their studies. He wrote later : „we played brilliant parts in the the theatre of the world“. He does although seem to have attended some lectures on mathematics and natural sciences. The outstanding event of this period is the acqaintance with Friedrich Schlegel, who became his friend until his death. Let us throw a glance at the life of this extraordinary man: Friedrich Schlegel, born in 1772, led a restless life. Considered a difficult child, he was educated by different people, by his uncle, his elder brothers, at the age of fifteen apprenticeship in a bank (very unsatisfying), thereafter education in classical languages, which he mastered both aged eighteen. Then university, first Goettingen for less than one year, in May 1791 change to Leipzig, where he met Novalis. Unquenchable intellectual curiosity, he read a lot, fast and concentrated. In Leipzig he fell into compassion to a married woman who played with him and finally let him down. He considered first suicide, then murdering the woman but fled to gambling, lost and fell into debts. Brother August Wilhelm saved him from financial ruin, but debts leveled from now on always way above annual income. 1793 he accompanied Caroline Böhmer, designated wife of August Wilhelm in his brothers absence and got to know the fascinating woman. He quit university and decided to live as a writer. Avoiding creditors, he moved to a village near Dresden and spent two disciplined years in the country, writing „Geschichte der Poesie der Griechen und Roemer“ (History of Ancient Greek and Roman Poetry). In 1796 he lived for one year with August Wilhelm and Caroline in Jena, then moved to Berlin, where he lived with Schleiermacher and met his later wife, Dorothea Veit, daughter of the philosopher Moses Mendelsohn. In autumn 1799 he came back to Jena. The house of August Wilhelm and Caroline there was for the next two years the meeting-point of the afterwards so called Romantic Circle. Novalis, Tieck, Schelling, Ritter and others were frequent guests. Schlegel became the founder of the romantic movement as such in literature through his writings, mostly delivered in the form of the pointed aphorism or fragment. The programmatic organ of the romanticists was the periodical „Athenaeum“ (1798-1800), edited by him and his brother. He held lectures at Jena university on transcendental philosophy. In his novel „Lucinde“ he expressed a new, free attitude towards love. The brothers Schlegel were the first to acknowledge Goethe in their critical writings, but then developed a romantic counter-point to him. Goethe had their play „Ion“ performed at his Weimar theatre. In summer 1801 (after Novalis death), Schlegel and Dorothea were without possibilties and money in Jena, they moved to Paris. He gave private lectures on european literature to the brothers Boisserée (collectors of German medival art, friends of Goethe; they inspired 3

the completion of the cathedral at Koeln). He studied Persian languages and met Alexander Hamilton - "only man on the continent to know sanskrit" - and learned some of him. Wrote „Sprache und Weisheit der Indier“ (Language and Wisdom of India), fundamental for indologic and comparative language studies. The official marriage with Dorothea Veit is in April 1804, afterwards they accompanied the brothers Boisserée to Koeln, where they stayed the following four years. In April 1808 Schlegel conversed to catholic belief and moved to Wien. In March 1809 he became secretary to Count Stadion, the Austrian prime minister. When Napoleon occupied Wien in June, he was asked to edit the „Oesterreichische Zeitung“ (Austrian Newspaper) until December, thereafter he took the greatest part in establishing the „Oesterreichischer Beobachter“ ( Austrian Spectator), the most important paper of the era Metternich, and was its editor until December 1810. He gave lectures, especially „Geschichte der älteren und modernen Literatur“ (History of Ancient and Modern Literature), in which he perceived the national literatures as organic, individual wholes. From 1815 to 1818 he was secretary of Austria to the (first) Federal German Parlament which resided in Frankfurt. He died in 1829. * Friedrich Schlegel wrote to his brother August Wilhelm in January 1792: „Fate gave a young man into my hands who might become everything“. And one month later: „He might become everything or nothing“. In the letter of January he gave a characterization of Novalis: „A still very young beeing - of slim, good appearance, very fine face with black eyes of majestic expression when he talks with fire of something beautiful - unbelievable much fire - he talks three times more and three times as fast as we others - the fastest apprehension and reception. The studies of philosophy gave him exuberant ease to form beautiful philosophic thoughts – his favorite authors are Plato and Hemsterhuys - with wild fire he told me one of the first evenings his opinion - of no evil being in the world - and everything approaching again the golden age ... he has already been a lot in sociability (he gets acquainted right away with everybody).“ Novalis writes to Friedrich Schlegel in a letter of August 1793: „For me you have been the high priest of Eleusis. I learned through you to know heaven and hell - through you I have tasted of the tree of knowledge“. In Leipzig, Novalis seems to have lived beyond his expenses and got indebted. In a letter to his father of February 1793 he told of an unfortunate love affair in the beginning of the year and of the pains of passion and forwarded his decision to enter military service in order to strengthen and stabilize his character. It turned out there was not enough money in the family to get him into the desired position, an outcome which may have been arranged as his family did not at all like his idea. He decided to continue his studies and changed to the university of Wittenberg in May 1793. In the sober atmosphere of the town Martin Luther had 4

originated from he finished them in one and a quarter years time, getting acqainted with the history of the catholic church alongside, and passed the examinations with the best marks.

Sophie His uncle, who wanted to help his talented nephew into a career in the big world, contacted the Prussian minister Karl August von Hardenberg to obtain a position in the administration of the Prussian state. Until the response would come it was decided to let him attain some practical experience in administrative work through an apprenticeship as „Aktuarius“ in the office of Kreisamtmann Coelestin August Just, the local presiding magistrate of the dukedom of Sachsen in Tennstedt. Novalis stayed with him from November 1794 to the beginning of 1796. He was much praised for his work there; the relationship to his superior turned into friendship. Apart from business, he studied thoroughly the philosophy of Fichte in that time. There are left more than five hundred pages of notes on the subject. He came to know Fichte personally, who lectured in Jena. There is an account of a meeting in the house of Niethammer in Jena in May 1795 where also Friedrich Hoelderlin was present. Fichte, strongly influenced by Kant, tried to develop all structures of the consciousness, including all structures of its possible contens, out of one basic thought, which he called the self establishing of the ego;. To him, all existence was only real in relationship to a consciousness, the world therefore consisting of ego (i.e. he who established himself) and not ego, the latter being the beyond of the former. Right at the beginning of his stay in Tennstedt Novalis made the acquaintance of Sophie von Kuehn, which was to be of great influence on his further life and literary works. On an official journey, on Monday, the 17th of November 1794 he entered the house of von Rockenthien in Grueningen, accompanied by a friend and met the stepdaughter, Sophie. He immediately fell in love to her, in his own words: „a quarter of an hour decided my life“. Her family presented her as fourteen years old although she was actually twelve and a half. He then payed frequent visits to Grueningen and half a year later, two days before her thirteenth birthday she told him that she wanted to be his. To illustrate her character we give a page of Novalis diary where he had put down reflections on her personality. It is entitled „Klarissa“, written August or September 1796: Her prematureness. She wishes to please everybody. Her obedience to and fear of her father. Her decency and yet innocent simple-mindedness. Her rigid-mindedness and her pliancy to people she once got fond of or whom she fears Her behavior in illness. Her moods (humour). What she likes to talk about. Her civility to strangers. Her well-doing. Her propensity to infantile play. 5

Attachedness to other women. Her judgements. Her opinions. Dress, dance. Activity in the household. Love to her brothers and sisters. Her musical ear. Her loved ones. Taste, religiousity. Free enjoyment of life. (...) Propensity to female activities. She does not want to be anything - she is something. Her face - her stature - her life, her health - her political situation. Her movements. Her speech. Her hand. She does not make much out of poetry. Her conduct against others, against me. Openness. She does not seem to have come yet to actual reflection - I came myself to it only at a certain period. With whom she has been together all her life. Whereabout has she been ? What does she like to eat. Her behavior towards me. Her fright of marriage. I must ask her concerning her peculiarities. (...)/ Her way to feel joy - to be sad. What pleases her most of people and things. Did her temperament wake up? (...) Her smoking tobacco. Her attachedness to her mother, like a child. (...) Her boldnes against her father. (...) Her fear of ghosts. Her economizing. (...) Face at obscenities. Talent to imitate. (...) Judgements about her. She is moderate - well-doing. She is irritable - sensitive. Her inclination to be educated. (...) Her attention to alien judgements. Her spirit of observation. Love of children. Spirit of order. Thirst for power. Her carefulness and passion for the proper - she wants that I please everywhere. She did not like that I turned so early to the parents, and let it in general be noticed to soon. She likes to hear narrate. She does not want to be troubled by my love. My love presses her often. She is cold throughout. / Unbelievable ability to disguise, to hide, of women in general. Her fine spirit of attention. Her right tact./ (...) They are more perfect than we are. More free than we are. Ordinarily, we are better. They perceive better than we do - their nature seems to be our art - our nature their art. They are born artists. /They individualize, we universalize./ She does not believe in a life after death - but in metempsychosis. She is interested in Schlegel. She does not like too much attention, yet dislikes neglect. She has fear of spiders and mice. She wants me always joyous. I shall not see the wound. She allows not to say you (i.e. adress second person singular) to her. The H on her cheek. Favourite dish - herb soup - beef and beans - eel. She likes to drink wine. She likes to see something loves the comedy. She reflects more about others than about herself. * In the beginning Novalis brother Erasmus showed himself a bit sceptical in letters, concerning the quick falling in love, but later came himself down to Grueningen, same as brother Carl; they all found the scene there very charming, at a time there was even talk of a multiple liason between the two families. The engagement though was first kept a secret in front of the father. An interesting occurence: in a fictious marriage announcement sent to a friend the date of marriage was given as the 19th, the day of its announcement 6

as the 25th of March; the first date turning out later to be Sophia's, the second to be Novalis death date. His wish to marry Sophie made him eager to attain a position and income enabling him to support a household and a family. The above mentioned plans of a higher career did not come to an end so he decided to enter the saltmines administration under his father. The 30th of December 1795 he was admitted as assistant to the board of directors and started work in February 1796 after attending a two week course in chemistry at the pharmacist Johann Christian Wiegleb in Langensalza. The pharmacist was adherent to the phlogiston theory , which considered the burnability of matter due to a special substance contained within,the phlogiston. It was only some years before that Lavoisier had discovered the role of oxygen in the process of burning. His job in the saltworks consisted mainly of inspection journeys to the various branches. The works were run by the government of the dukedom of Saxony. In November 1795, about the same time Novalis career was so far organized, his fiancee got seriously ill. Sophie was affected by an inflammation of the liver which developed in ups and downs until it got very bad in summer of 1796. She was brought to Jena and an operation was undertaken by Johann Christian Stark, the doctor of Schiller. It had to be repeated twice in August and September, but the wound did not want to heal. Goethe payed her a visit in Jena. Toward the end of the year she was brought back to Grueningen, where she died on the 19the of March 1797. Novalis had last seen her five days before and left her in the certainity of her death, apparently not being able to bear it any longer. Adding to grief, his brother Erasmus, with whom he had studied together in Leipzig, died the the following month after having suffered of tuberculosis. From the middle of April to the beginning of July he put down his daily moods and thoughts in a journal. The first reaction was that he feelt the strong conviction to follow Sophie into death. In a letter he related various dates important between him and Sophie: engagement on the 15th, her birthday an a 17th, her death on the 19th, the message getting to him on the 21th of March; he expressed his feeling to die on the 23rd of March the following year. As a matter of fact he died on a 25th of March four years to come. In this diary, he reflected the daily intensity of his feelings for Sophie and the rigidness of his decision to follow her. He did not work for the coming three months, stayed first in Tennstedt near her grave and later moved to his parents to Weissenfels. He first visited the grave on Easter sunday (16th of April) and then frequently. He read Goethes „Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre“. On the 13th of May he received August Wilhelm Schlegels translation of Shakespeares „Romeo and Julia“ which naturally touched him deeply; from the evening of the same day he recalled a visit to Sophies grave: „I blew the grave in front of me like dust centuries were like moments - her closeness was tangible - I believed she should always appear“. Apparently the encounter at the grave impressed him deeply, he will transform it into the third hymn of the poem „Hymnen an die Nacht“ (Hymns To The Night) two years later. 7

In the local churches annals there is written after the entry of Sophie's death a little poem by Novalis: „Verbluehe denn, du suesse Fruehlings Blume, Gott pflanzte dich ins bessre Leben ein, In seiner ewgen Liebe Heiligthume, Da wirst du ungetruebt uns Himmelswonne sein.“ It can now be found engraved on a plate in the churchyards wall. He studied Fichte again and on May, 29th there is the entry: „between the turnpike and Grueningen I had the pleasure to find the actual idea of Fichtes ego“. - On June, 29th, at the end of the Journal, there is the mysterious entry: „Xtus und Sophie“ (Christ and Sophie).

Freiberg Academy Finding himself more and more involved again in active life, his interest in sciences grew and he decided to take up studies at the mining academy in Freiberg. It was the most respected school for such studies at the time in Europe, led by the famous Abraham Gottlob Werner; Novalis later set him a memorial in his novel. His wish is granted by the ducal government and beginning of December 1797 he moved to Freiberg. The weeks before, aside his work, he studied Hemsterhuys again. The teachings of Frans Hemsterhuys are of the existence of a unity of the whole universe not perceptible by the human mind, only to be grasped by a not yet developed moral organ within man; love being the basic power of this new organ and poetry, in a wider sense, the means of its expression, the language of the Gods . He also transposed Newtons antagonism of the centrifugal and centripetal powers to all spheres, seeing attraction equal to love and repulsion equal to egotism. Novalis visited A. W. Schlegel, Fichte and others in Jena, after one of those visits he writes to Friedrich Schlegel: „best one, feel it with me - this almanach [a publication] drew me again into the world of the poets - the old love of my youth [i.e.poetry] awakes“. On his way to Freiberg he stopped in Leipzig and met Friedrich Wilhelm von Schelling for the first time, who had proposed a theory seeing nature and spirit as two equal worlds on the same basis, nature being visible spirit, spirit being invisible nature. He had been a close friend of Hoelderlin and Hegel during their studies at the protestantic theological school in Tuebingen. The academy at Freiberg had fifty to sixty students in a city of ten thousand inhabitants with a lack of the social life usually found near universities. But the students had access, even without recommodation, to the first families in town. One of them Novalis entered, it was the family of the head of the mining board, von Charpentier, who had before been a professor at the academy. Novalis was well accepted, to the birthday of Charpentiers wife on January 22nd 1798 he wrote a poem entitled „Der Fremdling“ (The Stranger),stating his own momentary position in the world. Five of the family's seven children still lived in the house, among them Julie, which was to become his fiancee a year from the 8

birthday party. Some scholars claim that he went to live with the family from spring 1798 on, but facts are not clear. In a letter to a niece of his friend Just in Tennstedt from February 1798 he wrote: „Julie is a crawling poison, one finds her, before one really notices, everywhere within oneself and it becomes the more dangerous the more pleasant it seems. Were I a young daredevil I would try once such a poisoning, but dulled as I am, it only exites my old nerves to light, joyful vibrations and warms my rigid blood for hours.“ In this Freiberg period his awakening interest in the world and the sciences finds its expression in numerous fragments he put to paper. He stayed in vivid contact with the brothers Schlegel in Jena and Berlin; they planned and undertook the edition of a periodical called „Athenaeum“. It first appeared in May 1798, bearing as its second article a collection of his fragments entitled „Bluethenstaub“ (Pollen). For this publication, he initially used the name Novalis. One of the fragments goes: „Goethe is the true governor of the poetic spirit on earth.“ Goethes diary shows that they had met for lunch March 29th in Weimar together with August Wilhelm Schlegel and for an evening session at Schiller's place the same day, but not much contact seemed to have happened because in a letter to Schiller of July 1798 Novalis expresses his wish to see Goethe once „open and communicative“. In the same spring of 1798 another collection of fragments emerged, being devoted to the new king and queen of Prussia. Friedrich Wilhelm III got to the throne in his 27th year after the death of his father. Since 1793 he was married to Louise, who bore him a second son in the year of the inthronisation (who was to become German emperor in 1871 at Versailles). His becoming king was generally applauded, several changes being hoped for. In fact, a somewhat more liberal and moral atmosphere got established, the charme of the queen helping with it. On May 11th in 1798, Novalis sends a group of fragments to Friedrich Schlegel in Berlin entitled „Glaube und Liebe“ (Belief and Love), to be published in the „Jahrbuch der preussischen Monarchie“ (Annals of the Prussian Monarchy) soon after. In these writings he deals with the monarchy and the state, seeing it as a means of education with the aim to bring humanity to its highest level. The two classes he sees as the educated and the uneducated, with the former being in the duty to educate the latter. The king is the symbol for the ideal man , the ultimate aim is to make everybody able to hold the throne. - The king himself was not quite open to these ideas, probably out of lack of understanding, a word of him is rendered: „One expects more of a king than he is able to give.“ The praise of the queen he found tasteless. Further publication was forbidden by the censors, the alias saving Novalis of direct criticism; literary activities were considered as below the dignity of the nobles. But these were not the only writings Novalis produced aside his studies in Freiberg. He began „Die Lehrlinge zu Sais“ (The Apprentices Of Sais), an unfinished novel dealing with the various approaches toward and the explanations of nature and the problems of being in it, all somewhat centered around the motto of Apollos temple in Delphi: „Know yourself“. Parallel to the „Lehrlinge...“ the „Hymnen an die Nacht“ (Hymns To The 9

Night) were created, considering the third hymn as the basic one (the encounter at Sophias grave) being written somewhat earlier and the last ones being finished at the turn of the years 1799/1800. It was printed end of September 1800 in the „Athenaeum“ and is often regarded as his deepest writing, mingling darkness and light, the mystery of Christ, the evolution of humanity and his own received revelaions in highly poetical phrase. The scientifical spirit of the time was eager and active, important discoveries having just been made and being expected. The new idea of the galvanism stirred the minds, Johann Wilhelm Ritter, who made astonishing electric and magnetic experiments with low means in a Jena attic had published his work (Proof That Galvanism Accompanies The Process Of Life In The Animal World) and was to become the founder of physical chemistry. The effort was to find a general principle or power as basis of life. Friedrich Schlegel states that galvanism was one of Novalis most loved ideas. Novalis started a collection of thoughts he called „Allgemeines Brouillon“, in which he tried to establish analogies between the different sciences, his plan was to come out with an encyclopedian collection encircling the heart of all matter. In it is talk of spiritual physics , chemical music , poetic physiology , physical history or moral astronomy , just to name a few. Over the time the notes grew to an amount of 350 pages. Friedrich Schlegel wrote to his friend Friedrich Schleiermacher „Hardenberg is busy kneading religion and physics into one dough. It is going to become an interesting pancake.“ End of May 1798 Novalis falls sick and has to retire for four weeks of the summer to Teplitz, a popular bath in Bohemia. After this, on a weekend in August he meets all his friends, Schelling, the brothers Schlegel and Caroline in Dresden. They visit the collection of antiques and paintings there and were all very impressed by Raphael's Sixtinian Madonna. Back in Freiberg he continues his studies. The students were compelled to spend three to four days per week in the mines to gain practical knowledge, judging from the amount of notes and the books he read the times were diligent. He read Schelling, Alexander von Humboldt, writings on mathematics and philosophy and got, due to his own illness, into the system of the Scotish doctor John Brown. Brown looked at life as the ability of being sensitive to irritations and held sickness as caused by either too low (asthenic) or too high (sthenic) sensitivity, the treatment consisting of rebalancing the state through remedies. Novalis shows special interest in the works of Franz von Baader (1765-1841), a catholic philosopher from Muenchen, whose theory was organic and wholistic, seeing all spiritual things manifested in the sensible world and one basic energy in all – love. His father had given him a horse which he used frequently, riding was consisdered helpful against tuberculosis. He was concerned about his health now, for one he wanted to complete his various literary plans, for the other he had become more and more acqainted with Julie and looked forward to a „bourgeois“ lifestyle. Julie had been struck by a severe nervous pain in the face which lasted until Chrismas when it suddenly ceased. Novalis seems to have 10

cared for her a lot; at Chrismas they finally get engaged. In a later letter, where he recapitulates his life, he says that in this period of pain the idea of an alliance with Julie first came to his mind, although in a letter of December 10th to Friedrich Schlegel he says: „The early death is my big win - going on living the second gain.“ Writing to the same end of January the following year he thinks of his parents, his friends, brothers and sisters and Julie being dependent on him: „A very interesting life seems to be waiting for me but honestly, I rather would be dead.“ In the same letter where he tells Friedrich Schlegel the first time of his new love he proposes the plan of „errecting a literary, republican order - which is nevertheless mercantile-political - a real lodge of cosmopolitans“. He was thinking of a printing shop, and Jena, Hamburg or Switzerland should be housing the office. The time was rich with free-masonry and philantrophic societies, the tower-society in Goethes novel „Wilhelm Meister“ might also have given an example. A direct cause might have been the „Atheismusstreit“ (atheismquarrel), which a writing of Fichte on religion, having been confiscated by the duke, had stirred up and had made Fichte move from Jena to Berlin. But it stayed a plan, not mentioned anywhere else exept in this letter. The republican ideas must be seen in view of the situation in Europe at large. The French Revolution had been a recent event, Napoleon's star was on the rise. Around this time Friedrich Schlegel might have given him the impulse to write the „Geistliche Lieder“ (Spiritual Songs) by asking him in a letter of December 1798 to „saturate practics and history in your religion“. Ten of the fifteen songs were written before and around Easter 1799, when he visited Sophies grave again in Grueningen. They express a kind of mythology of christianity, telling of Christ and mother Mary, of the possibility of their recognition and of the existence of a higher, transcendent world, of the soothing consolation the realization of such can give. He presented them to his friends in autumn who were very touched, some of the songs have entered the protestantic song-books.

Career and works Pentecost 1799 he returned to Weissenfels, the summer found him busily working in the salt works again. From the middle of June on he was for one month assistant to von Oppel, who had come from the ducal government to inspect the various installations. Novalis must have impressed through his work; in a letter he sent afterwards to von Oppel he explained his personal situation, his plans to get married and asked for a proper position and income. It was granted in December, he became assessor to the board of three directors. Novalis got acquainted with Ludwig Tieck and his wife in July, a passionate friendship started, they continued meeting in Weissenfels or at one of Novalis frequent visits to the brothers Schlegel in Jena where the Tiecks moved in the middle of October. Tieck (1773-1853), who had hitherto published some 11

romantic novels and writings probably impressed through his poetical abilities, something which Schlegel lacked. Through him Novalis learned of the writings of Jacob Boehme (1575-1624), a shoemaker from Goerlitz in Bohemia who had turned into a protestant mystic. To him God was basis of all things, including evil, which is necessary to create the god. God creates himself out of this contradiction in his unity. Similar to this the good in man evolving from the evil. His influence reached among others the pietists, the romanticists and the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Novalis writes about him to Tieck: “One sees thoroughly in him the powerful [season of] spring, its gushing, germinating, shaping and mixing forces which bring birth to a world out of the inside - A real chaos full of dark desire and wonderful life - a true, dispersing microcosmos.“ A later labelled „romantic circle“ formed itself in Jena including Friedrich Schlegel, his brother August Wilhelm and his wife Caroline, the Tiecks, Friedrich Wilhelm von Schelling, who was lecturing there, Johann Wilhelm Ritter and others, the latest productions were read to each other and the topics of the time were discussed in „symphilosophical“ talks. In the middle of November the group met for a couple of days, visited Jean Paul in Weimar and had, by chance, an afternoon promenade with Goethe. Triggered by Friedrich Schleiermacher's „Reden über die Religion“ (Speeches On Religion), which he had read with great interest, Novalis had just written and read to his friends the essay „Die Christenheit oder Europa“ (Christianity Or Europe), which draws a vivid picture of the middle ages, united in harmony through the Christian belief, the impact of the cessation through the reformation and concludes with stating the need for the resurrection of a new belief based on Christ, having to be able to guide through the new era of freedom and science just opening up. Schelling, feeling somewhat colder and realistic, was inspired by it to some ironic verses; the friends were thinking of publishing both in the „Athenaeum“. Goethe, asked to judge, advised to leave everything in the „abyss of the not-printed“. August Wilhelm, who, having the closest contact, had discussed the matter with him, said afterwards that Goethe had studied the writings carefully, had not spared words of explanation and had in general shown a warm, fatherly attitude towards their affairs. Novalis himself had met Goethe three times in his life, always accompanied by others, there seems not to have been any close contact. Around the turn of the year Novalis started to write the novel „Heinrich von Ofterdingen“. In December 1799 he had stayed with Karl Wilhelm Funk at the foot of the Kyffhaeuser mountain. Funk himself had written a biography of the Stauffer emperor Friedrich II. In Funks library he must have come across von Ofterdingen, a partly historic and partly legendary figure, a troubadour somehow involved in the „Saengerkrieg“ (singers battle) on the „Wartburg“ (castle) near Eisenach in the thirteenth century, when he had to go south to seek the help of Klingsohr. The novel begins with Heinrich drawn or driven by the „blue flower“ to leave his house and become a poet. The first part ends with a most astonishing fairy-tale of its kind, dense, symbolic, developing, solving, inspiring but 12

unfathomable. The manuscript of the first part was ready for print and shown to his friends end of April 1800. He refers to his novel in various letters to his friends as follows: 27/02/1799 to Caroline Schlegel: „... because I feel inclined to use my whole life for one novel - which could alone make a whole library - maybe contain years of lerning of a nation. Years of learning is not right, it expresses a certain where to. For me it shall be nothing but transition years from the infinite to the finite“. 23/02/1800 to Ludwig Tieck: „The whole (novel) shall be an apotheosis of poetry. Heinrich von Ofterdingen becomes in the first part as a poet mature - in the second one as a poet transfigured.“ 18/06/1800 to Friedrich Schlegel: „The second part will be a commentary on the first. The antipathy against light and shadow, the longing for clear, hot penetrating ether, the unknown holy, the vesta, in Sophie, the mingling of the romantic of all ages, the petrificated and petrificating (rational) mind, Arctur, chance, the spirit of life, single traits only, like arabescs - like this now look at my fairy-tale...“. * The novel was only printed in June 1802, after the authors death. The year to come after Novalis had finished the first part of „Heinrich von Ofterdingen“ was to be his last; it was filled with business activities. In January he had received the comission to take part in a big geological survey of Saxony, the first half of June he spent on a expedition from Gera to Leipzig on this behalf, accompanied by a young man. At the same time he applied for the installment as „Amtmann“ of Weissenfels, the post having become vacant. This involved working out a probal case as proof of ability. He feels weaker in the summer, Tieck, who had visted him noted that his diet now consisted of mainly milk and vegetables, very few meat and wine. His personal notes circle around thoughts on sickness, voluptiousness and religion. He writes the poems „Vermählung der Jahreszeiten“ (Marriage of the Seasons) in August, „Astralis“ in September, parallel to a voluminous expertise concerning lots of land containing coal to be bought by the dukedom. The two poems can now be found among the fragments for the second part of H. v. Ofterdingen. Of October date his last diary entries; in the middle of the month he visits Dresden where he falls seriously ill probably after hearing the news of his 13 year old brother Bernhard having drowned himself in the river Saale. He has to stay in Dresden, where Julie and his brother Carl are with him, his last two poems are written there. In December 1800 he is appointed as „Amtmann“ and finds himself able to move back to Weissenfels. His state of health gets slightly better and he become optimistic for the future, but Carl writes in a letter that the negative symtoms increase. We have account of his last days by Carl: 13

„In the last weeks and days he had secure belief in getting well because the cough got better and exept for the exhaustion he did not feel ill himself; when he did not read he reflected on his poetical work which made him say some days before his death: „Let me be better first, then you shall get to know what real poetry is, I have magnificent songs and poems in my head.“ From March 19th on, Sophies deathdate, he got noticeably weaker, several of his friends visited him, Friedrich Schlegel came the 23rd, Novalis was pleased to see him arrive and they had long talks on the projects of each. The 25th, mornings at six after a quiet night he asked his brother for two books, looked something up, then demanded his food and talked until about eight. He asked his brother to play the piano whereover he fell asleep. Friedrich Schlegel later entered the room, Novalis slept until after 12, when he died without the slightest motion. His face in death was unchangedly joyful, as if he lived.“

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