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Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg (2 May 1772 – 25 March 1801), pen name Novalis (/ noʊˈvɑːlɪs /; German: [noˈvaːlɪs]), was a German aristocrat and polymath, who was a poet, novelist, philosopher and mystic. He is regarded as an influential figure of Jena Romanticism.
Novalis (born May 2, 1772, Oberwiederstedt, Prussian Saxony [Germany]—died March 25, 1801, Weissenfels, Saxony [Germany]) was an early German Romantic poet and theorist who greatly influenced later Romantic thought.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Life and Works
- Cosmology
- Novalis’s Account of History
- Subjectivity and The Vocation of Humankind
- Romanticization and Poetry
- The Artist as Genius
- Language and The Fragment
- The Mediator
- Relation to Christianity
- References and Further Reading
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Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg, better known by his pen name Novalis, was born on May 2nd, 1772, at his family’s home at Schloss Oberwiederstedt in the Harz Mountains, about 80 kilometers from Leipzig. Friedrich was the oldest son of eleven children born to Heinrich Ulrich Erasmus Freiherr von Hardenberg (1738-1814) and Auguste Ber...
Novalis’s cosmology is pantheistic; that is, it explains the world as a manifestation of the divine. Novalis presents the universe, including human beings, as the self-development of an originally infinite, undifferentiated, unconscious unity into finite individual entities, for the purpose of self-knowledge, or self-consciousness. While the starti...
Novalis claims that the world that modern human beings inhabit, in which the universe is a system of separate, finite entities and in which human beings are individual subjects, does not reflect the essential nature of the universe. Rather, this state of affairs is a development that began at the start of time, with an initial self-differentiation ...
Novalis is a pantheist, maintaining that what we perceive as particular entities, including individual human beings, are not, in fact, most essentially distinct objects related externally and physically to one another, but are more fundamentally parts of a divine whole, connected internally through their shared spiritual nature. The individual huma...
Novalis claims that the “cultivation of the earth” that he describes as the vocation of humankind is to be achieved through a form of “poetic” or “Romantic” creativity. The activity of interpreting the world as embodying the divine partially overcomes the separations between the physical and the spiritual and between the self, as subject, and the r...
Novalis’s theory of the genius reflects how he thinks interpreting physical objects and events as spiritual actually invests these objects and events with spirit, creating a real physical world that manifests the divine. According to Novalis, the activity of the artist or genius is an exemplification and intensification of what human beings always ...
According to Novalis, language, the mind, the world, and the divine have analogous structures that allow them to reflect each other. Furthermore, some uses of language bring the world and the mind closer together by allowing them to reflect each other more closely. The kinds of language that do this are not those that give the most accurate descrip...
Interactions with other human beings and objects and events in nature are important in Novalis’s account for realizing the inner spiritual unity of the world. In addition, particular figures stand out as especially important for this goal, acting as precursors for unification with the rest of existence and indeed as means to establishing this union...
Novalis was raised in the pietistic tradition, attending a Lutheran school and having a strictly religious father who attempted to raise his children in line with the precepts of the Herrnhuter church. This background influenced the vocabulary, imagery, and some of the content of Novalis’s philosophy, in particular: his claim that the mundane can b...
a. Works by Novalis in German
1. Schriften. Zweite, nach den Handschriften ergänzte, erweiterte und verbesserte Auflage in vier Bänden, edited by Paul Kluckhohn and Richard Samuel. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1960. 1.1. The authoritative edition of Novalis’s collected works, including notes, diary entries, and letters.
b. Works by Novalis in English Translation
1. Fichte Studies, edited by Jane Kneller. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 1.1. Novalis’s critical reception of Fichte. Includes an informative introduction by Kneller. 2. Henry of Ofterdingen, translated by Palmer Hilty. Long Grove, Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc., 1992. This translation first published in 1964. 2.1. An unfinished bildungsroman in which Henry, with the aid of various mediating figures, develops towards his vocation as a poet. 3. Hymns to the Night, translated by...
c. Works About Novalis and Early German Romanticism in English
1. Behler, Ernst. German Romantic Literary Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. 1.1. An influential account of the literary theory of the early German Romantics, situating Novalis’s work in the context of his study of Fichte and the work of close contemporaries such as the Schlegel brothers and Tieck. 2. Haywood, Bruce. Novalis, The Veil of Imagery: A Study of the Poetic Works of Friedrich von Hardenberg, 1772–1801. Gravenhage: Mouton, and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Pre...
Novalis was the pseudonym of Georg Philipp Friedrich von Hardenberg, who wrote philosophical fragments, poetry, novels, and essays on topics such as cosmology, history, subjectivity, language, and religion. He was a central figure in the Jena circle of early German Romantics, influenced by Fichte, Herder, Goethe, and Boehme.
May 21, 2009 · The philosophical impact of early German romanticism in general and Georg Philipp Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis) in particular has typically been traced back to a series of fragments and reflections on poetry, art, and beauty.
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Literature. Overview. Novalis. (1772—1801) Quick Reference. Pseudonym of the German Romantic poet and philosopher Friedrich von Hardenberg (1772–1801). In 1790 he entered the University of Jena, where he met Friedrich von Schiller and Friedrich Schlegel, completing his studies at Wittenberg in 1793.
Dec 15, 2020 · German Romantics, much like their English counterparts, valued spontaneity and naturalness, in part as a reaction to the beginning loss of the natural world due to industrialisation and urbanisation. Here we look at Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis) (1772–1801), who is one of the more poetic and mystical German Romantics.
Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg, commonly known as Novalis (May 2, 1772 – March 25, 1801), was one of the earliest of the German Romantics.
