Novalis, the pen-name of Friedrich von Hardenberg, German writer, who was born at Wiederdett, near Mansfeld, in Prussian Saxony, 2d May 1772. Whilst being educated at Jena, Leipzig, and Wittenberg he came under the influence of Schiller, and became acquainted with Fichte, Fr. Schlegel, and Tieck, studied deeply the works of Boehme, and imbued himself with the spirit of Romanticism to such an extent that he was afterwards designated the 'Prophet of Romanticism.' He made his start in life as a mining official. At Weissenfels (1795) he fell in love with a beautiful young girl, whose early death left a lasting impression upon him. Ere many years were past he himself, delicate from his boyhood up, was seized with consumption, and died 25th March 1801. The principal tenets of his two philosophical romances, both left incomplete, Heinrich von Ofterdingen and Lehrlinge zu Sais, were that life ought to be poetry realised in practical conduct, and that there are in the universe many verities and realities the truth of which cannot be grasped by the cold, critical intellect; they can only be known by the sympathetic intuition of feeling. His Hymnen an die Nacht are a glorification of his sorrow at the loss of his mistress. These, together with his Poems and Sacred Songs, are the only finished productions he has left. Novalis penned many thoughtful and suggestive sentences, often in very graceful language; but on the whole his writings lack precision of thought and robust common sense; their prevailing atmosphere is a mystic twilight, where is much obscurity, but also much beauty and much deep feeling. His Sämtliche Werke (2 thin vols.) were published by Tieck and Fr. Schlegel in 1802. To these a third volume, containing a supplement to the Life printed in vol. i., together with poems and philosophic fragments by Novalis, was added in 1846. See
Carlyle's Miscellaneous Essays (vol. ii.), the German Life of Novalis published at Gotha (2d ed. 1883), and his correspondence with the Schlegels (Mainz, 1880).