 Soon after Novalis’s death, his friends amongst the romantics, led by Tieck and Friedrich Schlegel, started spinning the myth about the über-sensitive visionary poet and aesthete, the beautiful soul, forever longing for the unattainable blue flower, the symbol of eternal love and divine grace that would so enthrall the character of Heinrich von Ofterdingen. The legend of Novalis as the arch-romantic author rapidly gained credence, and his literary style became influential for writers from Georg Büchner, via the symbolists, to Hermann Hesse and the avant-garde movement in France and Germany. In the philosophical domain, the reception of Novalis has been more reluctant. Some of this reluctance must be explained by the fact that until the publication of the critical edition, it was difficult to distinguish between the posthumously created image of Novalis, on the one hand, and his real philosophical contribution, on the other. This difficulty also colors the harsh judgments of Hegel, Novalis’s most rampant critic among his contemporary Germans.