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"Novalis was the pseudonym of Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr (Baron) von Hardenberg (May 2, 1772 - March 25, 1801), an author and philosopher of early German Romanticism."

"Novalis was the pseudonym of Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr (Baron) von Hardenberg (1772-1801), called Friedrich von Hardenberg. The death in 1797 of his young fiancé, Sophie von Kühn, led him to write Hymnen an die Nacht (Hymns to the Night), a set of six prose and verse lyrics first published in 1800 in Athenaeum, a literary magazine edited by August Wilhelm Schlegel and his brother Friedrich Schlegel. Seven months after the publication of Hymns to the Night, Novalis died of tuberculosis, the same disease that had claimed his fiancé.