What happens when the greatest philosophers, novelists, poets, playwrights, and scientists all converge on a small city in eastern Germany? As Andrea Wulf writes in her delightful book, they change the way we see the world. Jena, in the 1790s, was the cradle of Romanticism, which in the decades that follow spread to the rest of Europe, Great Britain, and the United States. Jena would seem to be an unlikely venue for launching an international revolution: it had no theater, no museums, no court culture as existed in nearby Weimar. But it did have a university - and one where the faculty had unusual freedom to pursue and teach radical ideas. In 1793 the university recruited a young philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who, influenced by Kant and the politics of the French Revolution, developed a radical gospel of subjectivity that electrified the students at the university. Andrea Wulf does the right thing in not focusing on Fichte's virtually unreadable texts but rather convey the excitement he brought to his young students, and later, to the poets, writers, scientists who flocked to Jena to hear his lectures. One luminary was Goethe, who made the short trip by horseback from Weimar to Jena to attend Fichte's lectures. It was then that he bonded with Jena's most famous citizen Friedrich Schiller. Soon other famous writers and thinkers followed - including the Schlegel brothers, the poet Novalis, the novelist Tieck and the von Humboldt brothers. Since there was little other entertainment in Jena, deep friendships were formed among this brilliant group and they spent time with each other on long walks, gathering in one of the many taverns, and meeting for long dinners with lively arguments over the meanings of Fichte's philosophy. Of course I was familiar with the works of Goethe, Schiller and the others, but in Wulf's book they all come alive: we learn about their habits, their sex lives, their petty jealousies, etc.
Romanticism was fueled by philosophy. And Fichte's influence cannot be understated:
"Fichte's ideas were a work in progress. He didn't arrive in Jena with a fully formed philosophical system: instead he developed and expanded as he lectured. His many students fed his imagination and thinking. He explored, found and generated his ideas, he said, 'with the listeners and before their eyes.' As they watched Fichte's thinking unfold, they felt they were witnessing something momentous. They were thrilled to see their hero conjuring up this new world. Fichte's philosophy was alive - so new and revolutionary that even its creator had to revise it as he went along."
As influential as Fichte was by 1799, his star would soon be eclipsed by Friedrich Schelling, who, in turn, was surpassed by Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel - both of whom were recruited by the university. Fichte, himself, was later accused of atheism and banished from Jena.
The central figure in Andrea Wulf's narrative is Caroline von Böhmer-Schlegel-Schelling - a brilliant free spirit who, no matter where was always the center of attention with her beauty and intelligence. As a widow with a young daughter she carried on an affair with a French officer in French-occupied Mainz. Then, pregnant, she was imprisoned in Koenigstein along with her daughter Auguste by the Prussians for "consorting with the enemy". After release from prison, she married August Wilhelm von Schlegel and began a highly productive collaboration. Together, they began translating and published the works of Shakespeare - translations that still hold up today. She wrote numerous articles, essays, and even a novel - all published under her husband's name. For a brief period in 1799 Caroline presided over the "Jena Set" at her home in Jena - where the resident poets, philosophers, novelists met and worked together nearly every day - with Goethe frequently dropping in from Weimar. The was a time of enormous creativity and productivity as the group worked and played in communal harmony. But of course the harmony could not last. The concentration of strong personalities and egos exerted a centrifugal force. August Wilhelm Schlegel's brother Friedrich reveled in conflict and started a bitter feud with Schiller. Friedrich's mistress, the married Dorothea Veit, poured fuel on the fire with vicious gossip about Caroline. Goethe stayed above the fray and did his best to calm the acrimony. But to no avail: the members of the Jena Set went their separate ways. By the time Napoleon destroyed the city in the 1806 Battle of Jena, only Hegel had remained there - and barely managed to rescue his manuscript of Phänomenologie des Geistes as the city burned. Still, the Jena Set lit the flame of Romanticism, which quickly spread across the continent to Britain and shortly thereafter, to America - influencing a generation of poets and thinkers, including Ralph Waldo Emerson - whose writings had a powerful influence on Friedrich Nietzsche.
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