Friedrich Schlegel in the context of "Novalis"

The University of Jena, officially the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (German: Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, abbreviated FSU, shortened form Uni Jena), is a public research university located in Jena, Thuringia, Germany.

The university was established in 1558 and is counted among the ten oldest universities in Germany. It is affiliated with six Nobel Prize winners, most recently in 2000 when Jena graduate Herbert Kroemer won the Nobel Prize for physics. It was renamed after the poet Friedrich Schiller who was teaching as professor of philosophy when Jena attracted some of the most influential minds at the turn of the 19th century. With Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, G. W. F. Hegel, F. W. J. Schelling and Friedrich Schlegel on its teaching staff, the university was at the centre of the emergence of German idealism and early Romanticism.

Jena Romanticism (German: Jenaer Romantik), also the Jena Romantics or Early Romanticism (Frühromantik), is the first phase of Romanticism in German literature represented by the work of a group centred in Jena from about 1798 to 1804. The movement is considered to have contributed to the development of German idealism in late modern philosophy.

August Wilhelm von Schlegel (Schlegel until 1812; /ˈʃleɪɡəl/ SHLAY-gəl; German: [aʊˈɡʊst ˈʃleːɡl̩]; 8 September 1767 – 12 May 1845) was a German scholar, critic, Orientalist, Indologist, translator and poet. With his brother Friedrich Schlegel, he was a leading influence within Jena Romanticism. His translations of Shakespeare turned the English dramatist's works into German classics.

Schlegel was also the professor of Sanskrit in Continental Europe and produced a translation of the Bhagavad Gita.

Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg (2 May 1772 – 25 March 1801), pen name Novalis (/noʊˈvɑːlɪs/; German: [noˈvaːlɪs]), was a German aristocrat and polymath, who was a poet, novelist, philosopher and mystic. He is regarded as an influential figure of Jena Romanticism.

Novalis was born into a minor aristocratic family in Electoral Saxony. He was the second of eleven children; his early household observed a strict Pietist faith. He studied law at the University of Jena, the University of Leipzig, and the University of Wittenberg. While at Jena, he published his first poem and befriended the playwright and fellow poet Friedrich Schiller. In Leipzig, he then met Friedrich Schlegel, becoming lifelong friends. Novalis completed his law degree in 1794 at the age of 22. He then worked as a legal assistant in Tennstedt immediately after graduating. There, he met Sophie von Kühn. The following year Novalis and Sophie became secretly engaged. Sophie became severely ill soon after the engagement and died just after her 15th birthday. Sophie's early death had a life-long impact on Novalis and his writing.