Heinrich von Ofterdingen [Henry von Ofterdingen], whose protagonist’s dream of the Blue Flower in the opening pages of the novel has become the epitome of Romantic longing for the infinite, is a prime example of the German Romantics’ reaction in theory and practice to Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Lehrjahre [Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, 1795-96]. In 1798 Friedrich Schlegel called Goethe’s novel one of the three greatest tendencies of the age, alongside the French Revolution and the philosopher Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre [Science of Knowledge, 1794-95], and also published a highly laudatory review of Wilhelm Meister in the journal Athenaeum, the theoretical organ of Early German Romanticism that he and his brother August Wilhelm Schlegel edited. Two years later, also in the Athenaeum, Schlegel’s “Brief über den Roman” [“Letter on the Novel”] defined the novel as a romantic book, thereby...
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Citation: Mahoney, Dennis. "Heinrich von Ofterdingen". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 24 September 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=14310, accessed 09 June 2026.]
