One of the most persistent narratives about the Romantic period is concerned with the origin of modernity. Several fundamental transformations and events – the American Declaration of Independence, the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the functional differentiation of society, the development of the modern scientific system, and the gradual secularisation of Western society – characterise the Romantic period as an age of transition towards something fundamentally new. Particularly the crisis of religion creates a sense that the concept of history is no longer experienced in terms of eschatology but rather as an immaimmanent trajectory without beginning or end.