Under the impression of the last developmental phase of Romanticism, people in the 1840s had become accustomed to equating romanticism with reactionism. In the early writing careers of the Schlegel brothers, it must be acknowledged that their views in many respects do not align closely with those of Goethe or Schiller, and that in some points there has been a regression. The point at which Romanticism breaks away from Classicism must be emphasized all the more sharply. Contributing to this is the aim of the present work, in which I have endeavored to keep a phrase by Scherer always in mind: "Those who do not understand that the cuts of the epochs in representation must be sharply highlighted while at the same time blurred again, do not know either life or history." This book.