ABSTRACT
In the 1790s, Schlegel had supported the pantheist version of Kunstreligion, whereas after the turn of the nineteenth century he became inspired by medievalism. This chapter discusses the first decade of the new century, during which Schlegel’s interest in the German Renaissance and the Middle Ages developed. It will show how the study of Indology played, perhaps surprisingly, an important role behind Schlegel’s idealisation of the Germanic tribes. Moreover, it is necessary to reconstruct the chain of thought that led Schlegel first to the idealisation of the Middle Ages, and then to his late philosophy, characterised by the Catholic Revival. The result of this process was an externalisation of the past national Golden Age, in striking contrast with the more future-oriented and utopian ideas of early Romanticism in the 1790s.
