Description

Around the turn of the nineteenth century a steady stream of young German poets and thinkers coursed to the town of Jena to make history The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars had dealt a onetwo punch to the dynastic system Confidence in traditional social political and religious norms had been replaced by a profound uncertainty that was as terrifying for some as it was exhilarating for others Nowhere was the excitement more palpable than among the extraordinary group of poets philosophers translators and socialites who gathered in this Thuringian village

Jena became the place for the young and intellectually curious the site of a new departure of philosophical disruption Influenced by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe then an elder statesman and artistic eminence the leading figures among the disruptorsthe translator August Wilhelm Schlegel the philosophers Friedrich Fritz Schlegel and Friedrich Schelling the dazzling controversial intellectual Caroline Schlegel married to August Dorothea Schlegel a poet and translator married to Fritz and the poets Ludwig Tieck and Novalisresolved to rethink the world to establish a republic of free spirits They didnt just question inherited societal traditions with their provocative views of the individual and of nature they revolutionized our understanding of freedom and reality