FOREIGN HANSER RIGHTS - Hanser Literaturverlage

FOREIGN
HANSER
RIGHTS
Wolfgang Hädecke
Novalis
A biography
400 pages. Hardcover
Publication date: August 29, 2011
B I O G RAP HY
»All is seed«: The definitive biography of Novalis, whose thinking and poetry still
resonate to this day.
The short but intense life of the romantic poet caught between his quest for the
‘blue flower’ and his striving for ‘wedding night, matrimony and progeny’.
Friedrich von Hardenberg (1772–1801), who called himself Novalis, was the young genius
among the German Romantics. His definition of Romanticism also holds true for his life:
»Insofar as I imbue the mundane with meaning, the ordinary with mystery, the familiar
with the seemliness of the unfamiliar, and the finite with the semblance of the infinite, I
romanticize it.« He studied law, geology and mine engineering, was inspired by the French
Revolution and wrote the poems Hymnen an die Nacht and Geistliche Lieder, as well as
the novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen. He penned philosophical critiques of Fichte and Kant
and advocated fair pay for miners. He befriended the seriously ill Schiller at an early age
but shortly after was forced to watch the love of his life, Sophie von Kühn, die; he would
have liked to die alongside her.
Wolfgang Hädecke recounts a life suspended between the extremes of the coal pits in the
heart of Germany and European enlightenment and idealism – which engendered an understanding
of nature and society that is highly topical once more.
Wolfgang Hädecke
born in 1929 in Weißenfels on the Saale, lives in Dresden. He is the author of biographies
on Heinrich Heine and Theodor Fontane among others, and also wrote the monograph
Dresden. Eine Geschichte von Glanz, Katastrophe und Aufbruch (2006).