The literature of German romanticism is investigated in the monograph as a cultural and aesthetic phenomenon. On the example of the work of such classics of romanticism as Novalis, Tick, Hoffmann, Heine and others, the forms of communication characteristic of the time, the image of an epochal personality, the features of a romantic worldview, the dialectic of "one's own" and "someone else's," as well as the existence and development of different genre forms and narrative perspectives in their artistic interaction. Particular attention is paid to the genre of literary fairy tales as a barometer of romantic consciousness. Echoes of the aesthetic discoveries of German romanticism in Russian literature are also shown.