Frances Wilson

How the quarrelsome ‘Jena set’ paved the way for Hitler

A group of warring 18th-century intellectuals, devoted to the theory of the ‘Ich’, left a dangerous legacy

Portrait of Friedrich Schiller, by Gerhard von Kügelgen. One of his poems, wrote Friedrich Schlegel, was so bad it was best read backwards. [Bridgeman Images] 
issue 27 August 2022
  • Comments

  • Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self

    Andrea Wulf

    John Murray, pp. 512, £25

Today, the German city of Jena, 150 miles south-west of Berlin, is the world centre of the optical and precision industry; but in the 1790s it spawned an even more marketable commodity. It was then a small medieval town on the banks of the river Saale with crumbling walls, 800 half-timbered houses, a market square and an unruly university.

GIF Image

Disagree with half of it, enjoy reading all of it

TRY 3 MONTHS FOR $5
Our magazine articles are for subscribers only. Start your 3-month trial today for just $5 and subscribe to more than one view

Read next

Trending

Douglas Murray

The unbearable smugness of American journalists

From the magazine
Polls occasionally appear which reveal the extent to which people trust – or rather don’t trust – journalists. In one last year, something called the Edelman Trust Barometer found that just 31 per cent of the British public said they trust the media, a fall of 6 per cent in a year. This puts the

More on architecture

Also by Frances Wilson

Latest

Comments

Join the debate for just £1 a month

Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.

Already a subscriber? Log in