The Jena romantics was a group centred in Jena from about 1798 to 1804 which played an important part in the first phase of Romanticism in German literature. The group was led by the versatile writer Ludwig Tieck. Two members of the group, brothers August Wilhelm and Friedrich von Schlegel, who laid down the theoretical basis for Romanticism in the circle’s organ, the Athenäum, maintained that the first duty of criticism was to understand and appreciate the right of genius to follow its natural bent.