Controversial attention recruited new waves to the movement. In the late
1780s the Tübingen theological Stift, the main center of orthodox theology,
officially protested to Berlin the subversiveness of Kant’s work (Zammito,
1992: 242). Negative counter-moves are as important as positive initiatives in
building the emotional energy of intellectual action. The local controversy
attracted the attention of the rebellious young liberals Schelling, Hegel, and
Hölderlin, roommates there in the early 1790s, converts to Kantianism. Fichte
visited Schelling in 1795, attracted by the prospects of publishing in a journal
connected with the famous theological center. Quick to seize the new intellec-
tual opportunities, the 20-year-old Schelling expounded his own version of
Fichtean Idealism. Via a chain of sponsorship, this youthful Idealist movement
soon made its center at the literary and Kantian stronghold at Jena-Weimar.
Schelling and Hegel found positions, after tutoring jobs, respectively as Ex-
traordinarius (associate professor) and Privatdozent (lecturer) in 1798 and
1801.
Excitement breeds more excitement during those few years which constitute
the upward path of a movement. Soon everyone of sympathetic belief or hungry
for fame was flocking to Weimar and Jena. The so-called Romantic circle
sprang up, a Bohemian colony practicing sexual libertarianism, centered on
the brothers Schlegel, who lived during 1795–1799 in Weimar and held aca-
demic posts at Jena. The Romanticists by and large continued the themes of
the earlier literary movement. The elder brother, August Schlegel, provided the
major success of the movement with his translations of Shakespeare (1797–
1810). Friedrich Schlegel was the firebrand of the movement, whose 1799 novel
Lucinde popularized Fichte’s Idealism and advocated the sexual rights of
women. The young novelists Tieck, Wackenroder, and Novalis published at
the height of this period, 1797–1800, extolling religious faith in an idealized
Middle Ages. The Werther-like reputation of the group was enhanced when
Novalis died in 1801 at age 29 after an unhappy love affair with a 13-year-old
girl, motifs soon to be popularized by Byron’s sister incest. In this circle the
austere technicalities of philosophy were superseded by aesthetic and religious
sentiment. Schelling, with his cherubic good looks and his wunderkind intel-
lectual eagerness, became an intimate of the circle and precipitated one of its
scandals when August Schlegel’s wife, Caroline, divorced him in 1803 to marry
Schelling, 12 years her junior.
The radicalism of these movements provoked opponents; but local contro-
versies only encouraged migration to new centers. In 1799 Fichte was accused
of advocating atheism, and left Jena. The Romantic circle moved to Dresden
and then Berlin, where it burned itself out by 1801, but not before it was joined
by Fichte and Schleiermacher, a prominent preacher at the Prussian court. Jena
was gradually displaced by Berlin as the prime center. Fichte remained there
Intellectuals Take Control: The University Revolution^ •^631