When we think of 19th century German philosophy, we perhaps think first of Nietzsche, or Hegel, and then some other men - but Germany in the 1800s was also home to a number of women philosophers.

These German Romantics helped shape today's ideas about the self, writes Andrea Wulf. ... 19th-century philosophers and poets who asked what it means to be free. Updated September 23, 2022.

The rise of German nationalism in the first half of the 19th century—and its apotheosis in the formation of a Prussian-dominated German Reich in 1871—brought many of these themes together.