Urbanität und Geselligkeit

AbstractThe article explores the early Romantic theories of Friedrich Schlegel and Friedrich Schleiermacher, focusing on their re-conception of urbanity (urbanitas) as it relates to the Romantic project of a union of poetry and life. The article argues that Schlegel and Schleiermacher work to establish a newethosof interaction (indifferent to the medium) that claims validity in the literary and social fields. It reconstructs Schlegel’s theory of the formation ofethosduring theAthenäumperiod, which he applies to the writer as the paradigm of the ‚speaker‘ under new public conditions and the essay as the paradigm of negotiating uncertain knowledge. Schleiermacher’s attempt to develop a theory of social behaviour, which emerged during his time in Berlin, forms the complement to Schlegel’s poetics on the side of social practice. The essay thus shows how rhetorical knowledge is reformulated and connected to practice after the end of the discipline.