Between 1770 and 1800, a collection of reflections on art and subjectivity was diffused in Germany. This is the philosophy of romanticism. It begins the revolutionary transformation of Europe. The German intellectual development began with a dialogue with the French Enlightenment by Lessing, Herder and their successors before turning into a reflection on the originality of cultural expressions. Radicalized by Kant, Schelling or Goethe, this thought of subjectivity in which the aesthetics is closely associated with morality and metaphysics encompasses literature, philosophy and religion. By its aspirations as by its consequences, it has shaped modernity and opened the way to the forms of communicative action of specialized cenacles whose digital interactions have rediscovered the thread. After this first article presenting this European cultural movement, a second will deal with the philosophy of German romanticism and its academic transformation before a third sketches the transition from dialectics to digital.