Dangerous ideas & scandalous lives: Germany’s first Romantics

At the turn of the 19th century, a small university town in Germany became the beating heart of an intellectual revolution. From philosophers and poets to scientists and playwrights, Jena attracted some of Europe’s brightest minds. Andrea Wulf tells Ellie Cawthorne about how the scandalous lives of these thinkers were as controversial as their ground-breaking ideas.

Andrea Wulf is the author of Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self (John Murray, 2022)