ABSTRACT
In 1799 the German Romantic author Friedrich von Hardenberg, writing under his pen-name 'Novalis', produced an apparently historical essay – in view of its intensely rhetorical character perhaps better described as an address or sermon – with the title Europa. For the German Romantics, by contrast collaboration is driven by altruism, even idealism; it is an elevating experience in which egocentricity is deliberately and explicitly abandoned in favour of mutual respect, self-expression in favour of collective thought and creation. Both Novalis and Friedrich Schleiermacher, like many other German intellectuals of the time, came from families with a background in Pietism, a variant on Protestantism which rejected the institutionalised church and instead developed forms of congregational worship allowing individuals to exchange impassioned insights into their spiritual experiences. In the meantime Schlegel had found his own set of terms to describe the forms of social and intellectual collaboration sought by the Early Romantic circle.
