ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an overview of the early Romantic movement's central people, how they interacted with one another, and some of their ideas. While the early Romantic movement began in the 1790s and peaked in Jena and Berlin around 1800, most of its central figures remained active in European intellectual life for the next two or three decades. It begins by presenting the Fruhromantiker as individuals along with a sketch of their partnerships, rivalries, and collaborations. The Schlegel brothers, were born into a Hanoverian family of the upper middle class. At the center of the early Romantic movement were the two Schlegel brothers, August Wilhelm and Friedrich, and their female partners, Caroline Bohmer Schlegel Schellingand Dorothea Mendelssohn Veit Schlegel. The Schlegel brothers' lectures in in Vienna, and the movement's later tendency toward political conservatism and religious mysticism. The chapter concludes with a section considering the characters of the two poets, Friedrich Schlegel and Friedrich von Hardenberg.
