She was the female centerpiece of the early Romantic circle in Jena: Caroline Michaelis-Böhmer-Schlegel-Schelling, married in her second marriage to August Wilhelm Schlegel, one of the co-founders of early Romanticism, and in her third marriage to the philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling. Her life was lived literature, freedom with side effects. Even her backstory is remarkable enough. As the daughter of a professor, she spent her early years in the environment of the University of Göttingen, surrounded by illustrious representatives of the German Enlightenment. Widowed early after a conventional marriage, she plunged into the adventure of the Mainz Republic. She took the slogans of freedom literally and applied them to her own life—with all the consequences that she, as she said, "never lamented." In a time that puts many things up for negotiation, a woman follows her own life’s law.