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Novalis, detail of an engraving by Edouard Eichens, 1845 (credit: Courtesy of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Germany; photograph, Walter Steinkopf)

(born May 2, 1772, Oberwiederstedt, Prussian Saxony — died March 25, 1801, Weissenfels, Saxony) German Romantic poet and theorist. Born into a noble family, he took his pseudonym from a former family name. He studied law and then mining and in 1799 became a mine inspector. His beautiful Hymns to the Night (1800) expresses his grief on the death of his young fiancée. In his last years before his own death from tuberculosis at age 28, he drafted a philosophical system based on idealism and produced his most significant poetic work. His mythical romance Heinrich von Ofterdingen (1802) describes a young poet's mystical and romantic searchings.

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