Abstract

The German Romantic movement initiated a semiotic code in a variety of interrelated disciplines. Nationalistic in tenor, it established a political movement against Napoleonic tyranny and occupation. In terms of its complete permeation of German intellectual and cultural society by the time of the German Wars of Liberation (1812-15), the movement paralleled the French revolutionary movement to radically reorient society with a new set of social values and their corresponding semiotic symbols. Theories of symbols were formulated by both philosophers and critics, and applied by artists and writers to the corresponding body of art and literature. Nationalist propaganda written by Friedrich Schlegel, Ernst Moritz Arndt, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Adam Müller designed to encourage recruitment was based on a lexicon of Romantic movement referents.