ABSTRACT
National antiquarianism became a popular field of study in Germany during the late eighteenth century and focused on recording all things local: history, natural phenomena, culture, and above all, artefacts. Germany, like Britain, began to produce a large cohort of private scholars, as study at the universities became available to a more extended social stratum who, holding appointments as clergymen, librarians or other administrative positions with aristocratic patronage, pursued antiquarian interests. Many antiquarians in Britain, as in Germany, were clergymen of reformed Christian denominations who understood the transformation and employment of Christian religion in the service of late Roman colonialism. The meditative state necessary to communicate with the spiritual aspects of nature inspired not only the poetic trend of sensibility, as exemplified by Gray, but also the development of natural philosophy in Germany. Caspar David Friedrich's interpretation of the chalk cliffs of Arkona as 'Germany's last crag' echoes its historic significance for antiquarian explorations.
