author
Novalis
1772–1801
A central voice of early German Romanticism, this poet and thinker wrote with unusual intensity about love, nature, imagination, and the spiritual life. Though he died at just 28, his work left a lasting mark on literature and philosophy.
2 Audiobooks
Henry of Ofterdingen: A Romance.
by Novalis
About the author
Born Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg in 1772, he is better known by the pen name Novalis. He was a German writer, philosopher, and aristocrat, and is widely regarded as one of the defining figures of early German Romanticism.
His writing brings poetry, philosophy, religion, and science into close conversation. He is especially remembered for Hymns to the Night and the unfinished novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen, which helped shape the Romantic image of the mysterious blue flower.
Novalis died in 1801 at a very young age, but his influence far outlived him. Readers still return to him for the dreamlike, searching quality of his work and for the way he turned inward feeling and wonder into literature.