Novalis, << noh VAH lihs >> (1772-1801), was the pen name of Baron Friedrich von Hardenberg, a German Romantic poet. Five poems by Novalis, called Hymns to the Night (1800), express his religious, mystical nature, and a longing for death. In the essay Christianity or Europe (1799), Novalis tried to show that people lived more meaningful lives in the spiritual unity of the Catholic Middle Ages than in his own time. This attitude became a theme of German Romanticism.
Novalis was born on May 2, 1772, in Saxony. The death of his 15-year-old fiancee in 1797 deepened his melancholy and his religious temperament. Novalis’s work as a mining engineer brought him close to the land and intensified his love of nature and its mysteries. He died on March 25, 1801.
