 In effect, most commentators credit A.W. Schlegel for having given the word ‘romantic’ a systematic significance and affirmative tone from the very beginning (Furst 1969: 84). In contrast with other literary critics who used the term in contradictory and erratic ways (or avoided it altogether, such as Schelling, even if he based his aesthetics on the difference between the Ancient and the Modern), Schlegel believed it was important to transmit a clear-cut understanding of the term and “to elevate it again to its true signification” (LDA: 441). Indeed, his purpose was to foster a solid movement that should become the symbol of modernity and Germany as well as Europe, as he clearly indicates in the introduction to his Berlin lectures: 