 Novalis’s turn to the church is indisputably problematic when judged from a 21st century perspective. Yet it is important to see that within his own time, most of his political writing, up until around 1798, is representative of the progressive reformist movement in Germany. Furthermore, Novalis’s democratic, pluralistic, and egalitarian ideals should not be dismissed because of his later, more conservative sentiments, nor should the connection he sees between these ideals and a commitment to Bildung. It is this notion of Bildung, the idea that democracy requires a triad of individual education, societal plurality, and, not least, a capacity for impartial judging, that will remain Novalis’s most valuable contribution to political thought.