Novalis (born as Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg in 1772) was the son of the saline director in Saxony. Thus he grew up and acquired basic impressions of mining and science but also of pietistic ideas of the Moravian community, which his father had joined in. It was the mining family tradition that motivated Novalis in 1797, after having successfully ended his studies of the Law, to attend the Mining Academy of Freiberg, where he got involved with all geosciences, mathematics, chemistry, biology, mining science and even philosophy. Here he eventually became befriended with his teacher Gottlob Abraham Werner (1749–1817).
Under the influence of Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s scientific doctrine (germ. Wissenschaftslehre) and evoked by his experiences at Freiberg, Novalis attempted forming his own world view, based on the idea of a profound interplay between science, Arts and philosophy. To this approach he joined the idea of the existence of progressive universal poesy claiming the inseparable link between poesy and science, attributing to poesy the ability of working into future. It has to be said that at the beginning of German Romanticism no single scientific disciplines were independently focused on. The investigation of nature as such led to the so-called ‘natural doctrine’ (germ. Naturlehre) following a priori the romantic idea of nature considered an inseparable entity.
By his philosophical approach, Novalis aimed at the edition of an all-encompassing Encyclopaedia of Arts and Sciences. This work has never appeared, though, as Novalis died early at the age of 29 years. However, informative material having been collected as preliminary work to the Encyclopaedia remained as Notes for a Romantic Encyclopaedia (germ. Das allgemeine Brouillon) with considerations on each term to be explained in the volumes. These notes had been created from 1798–1799 during Novalis’ stay at Freiberg, and had repeatedly been revised by Novalis himself. It represents fundamental witnesses of early romantic concepts and valuable material in following the development and effect of ideas involved in the intention taken in hand. The Notes had been edited for the first time in correct chronological order by Hans-Joachim Mühl in 1983.
The presented data attempt to put forward the role of geology-related terms presented in the Notes and to explain the contribution of geological knowledge to the ensemble of Novalis’ widespread notion of science and Arts.