Discovering the Land of the Blue Flower: A Guide to Novalis’ Central Germany

Friedrich von Hardenberg had his big birthday in 2022. That was his 250th birthday. A not insignificant birthday, because Hardenberg, who called himself Novalis as a poet, was not just any poet. To this day he is regarded as the most original and important poet of early German Romanticism. And his whole short life is connected with the Central Germany region. Here is the home of the Blue Flower.

All of the poet’s stations in life are here – from Oberwiederstedt Castle near Hettstett, where he was born in 1772, the seat of his family, to the former salt works office in Weißenfels, where his family lived after his father became director of the salt works Artern, Kösen and Dürrenberg in Saxony was appointed, and the Stadtpark, the former Nikolaifriedhof, where Novalis was buried.

The “Novalishaus” is located in the former salt works office and Oberwiederstedt Castle has also become a cultural place, to which lovers of early romanticism make pilgrimages.

And with Jena, where the circle of early romantics formed around Novalis, and his places of study in Leipzig, Wittenberg and Freiberg, the main stages of his education are also in Central Germany, as is Tennstedt, where he received his first position as a writer, and Grüningen Castle, where his great love, Sophie von Kühn, lived. Just 13 years old. Possibly the origin of some of his most famous poetry.

Novalis places in central Germany

Manfred Orlick’s concern with this little Novalis volume is, of course, first and foremost to make the poet’s connections to his central German homeland visible and thus to make it clearer to the readers of the booklet how much this region was the birthplace of German Romanticism at the time. With all its ruptures, which, as is well known, can be found in Friedrich von Hardenberg’s biography.

Because the native estate in Oberwiederstedt did not offer the old noble family any secure income. Which already forced Friedrich’s father to accept a well-paid position as director of a salt works. And Novalis also had to aspire to a career as a salt works assessor, even to the position of district captain, after he had added a mining degree to Freiberg.

Which then enabled him to go in search of coal deposits in the south of Leipzig, because the available wood was not sufficient to operate the salt pans. A memorial stone at the edge of the Profen mine reminds us of this side of Hardenberg’s life.

And, of course, Orlick can only touch on the discussion of how this profane work for Novalis collided or even merged with his poetic gifts. The latter is likely. The professional connection to rock, earth, and minerals can also be seen in the poems that were written in the few years up to Novalis’ early death in 1801. Almost all of them are only available as fragments and were published posthumously by his friends and estate executors.

The longing for an ideal world

But with Novalis, the central theme of Romanticism also becomes visible – the longing for an ideal world, mostly reflected in the transfigured past, with Novalis in a Christian Middle Ages that was perceived as intact. Which was then to become the main motif in German Romanticism.

And so, if you travel through central Germany in Novalis’ footsteps, you can also go in search of the blue flower and what it could actually mean. Even today. Because the romantic attitude towards the world has not disappeared. People are still or again looking for the better world in a glorified past.

Sometimes with good reason, because that’s what Novalis addresses again and again: the connection with the living world that is experienced as destroyed. What you can’t overlook in his “Bloomdust” publication. German Romanticism was not just a flight from the world, but also a longing for being one with the world again. “We dream of traveling into space: isn’t the universe within us?” asks Novalis in Pollen Thesis No. 16.

The Land of the Blue Flower

Orlick also gives a brief overview of the poet’s work, so that the reader can also get a certain overview of the works that make Novalis, in a way, the most important exponent of early Romanticism.

And of course he also presents those places of remembrance where the legacy of the young man is still being cultivated today. And thus also makes it clear that the manageable work of Friedrich von Hardenberg is also at home in a very concrete landscape.

A landscape that by 1800 was long since losing its “romantic” character. Salt pans and coal mining were the harbingers of an age in which there was actually no longer any room for romance. Which is why romantic literature, with its longing for an ideal world, caused quite a stir at this time.

If it was getting louder and louder outside, then the readers at least wanted to travel back home in their reading chairs from time to time, to a Middle Ages that were understood to be peaceful, with enchanted castles and secretive monasteries. And the silent love for women, who could turn into flowers in dreams.

And the chronological table in the appendix finally makes it clear how little time the poet Novalis had at the end – and how he used this time purposefully for that narrow work that some people puzzle over today and that others simply enjoy when they come back It’s time to dream of blue flowers after the day’s work in the factories, mines and offices. Places that Novalis knew only too well. And of course some of them can still be visited.

Gladly with the – false – German astonishment that the wallpaper for the beautiful romanticism consists of salt, soot and paperwork in the office.

Manfred Orlick True stories about Friedrich von Hardenberg, called Novalis Tauchaer Verlag, Leipzig 2023, 13 euros.