Georg Philipp Friedrich,
Freiherr von Hardenberg, was born in Schloß
Oberwiederstedt in Prussian Saxony on 2 May 1772. The name Novalis came from an old family name
de Novali. He stressed it on the first syllable.
You see other variants of his forenames: the ones I give are the ones used by the International Novalis Society.
He studied law at Jena in 1790-1 and at Wittenberg in 1793. Later he studied mining at Freiberg and worked as an auditor and assessor in a salt works at Weißenfels near Leipzig.
In March 1795 he met and loved the beautiful Sophie von Kühn, and her death from consumption on 19 March 1797, two days after her fifteenth birthday, deeply affected him. To her he dedicated his finest poetic work, the Hymnen an die Nacht (Hymns to the Night). This was published in 1800 in Athenaeum, a literary magazine edited by August Wilhelm Schlegel and Friedrich Schlegel.
He became engaged to Julie von Charpentier in 1798. He himself died of consumption in Weißenfels on 25 March 1801. (His bicentenary is being celebrated in Germany next month.)
Other works by Novalis are the incomplete novels Heinrich von Ofterdingen and Die Lehringe zu Sais. His work was very influential in the nineteenth century: on Heine, De Quincey, Nietzsche, George MacDonald, Swinburne, Rilke among others.
Hymnen an die Nacht is seventeen pages long, in six sections, mainly prose-poem with some verse. He begins by saying how everyone loves the light; then he turns away to the night: Abwärts wend ich mich zu der heiligen, unaussprechlichen, geheimnisvollen Nacht. Fernab liegt die Welt -- in eine tiefe Gruft versenkt -- wüst und einsam ist ihre Stelle. "Away I turn to the holy, inexpressible, mysterious Night. Faraway lies the world -- sunk in a deep tomb -- waste and lonely is its place."
In the third section he recalls when all his hope was lost in tears, light fled, and Night brought him dream: Zur Staubwolke wurde der Hügel -- durch die Wolke sah ich die verklärten Züge der Geliebten. In ihren Augen ruhte die Ewigkeit -- ich faßte ihre Hände, und die Tränen wurden ein funkelndes, unzerreißliches Band. "The hill turned to a cloud of dust -- through the cloud I saw the radiant features of my Beloved. In her eyes rested eternity -- I grasped her hands, and my tears became a glittering, untearable bond."
The poem Hinüber wall ich from the fourth section was set as the song Nachthymne by Schubert.
Novalis's birthplace at Oberwiederstedt now houses the International Novalis Society, the Novalis Museum, and the Early Romantic Research Institute: see www.uni-leipzig.de/~angl/novalis/.