Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder is little known in literary history. He died too young to make a name for himself, and his achievements were often attributed to his friend Ludwig Tieck, who edited his writings and propagated his ideas. But Wackenroder's work marks the beginning of German Romanticism, its liberation from the restrictions of Enlightenment, and its transformation of related elements originating in Sentimentalism. Major tendencies and motives of the Romantic movement--the rediscovery of medieval and Renaissance art, the inclination toward the colorful religiosity of Catholicism, the yearning for a golden age, and the attempt to rejuvenate reality through the arts--appear as early as 1796 in a work Wackenroder coauthored with Tieck, Herzensergießungen eines kunstliebenden Klosterbruders (translated as "Confessions from the Heart of an Art-Loving Friar," 1971). His most significant contribution consists of a new appreciation of art, and more specifically, the recognition of the effect of art on...