Abstract
Romanticism envisioned the human being as oriented beyond the Earth—toward the infinite expanse of the cosmos. From the late eighteenth century onward, this longing for the heavens emerged not only in poetry, painting, and music, but also in philosophy and science, which increasingly imagined the universe as boundless and dynamic. Central to Romantic thought was a redefinition of space: no longer merely a mechanistically conceived container space for things and their movements, but a dynamic ontological entity that holds the universe together and enables the emergence of existence. For Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, space was an “existing possibility” and a realm of freedom, echoing the Romantic conviction that human beings belong not to a single place, but to the whole. Space Romanticism brings together works by Caspar David Friedrich, Novalis, and other European artists to explore how Romantic art reflects and shapes this expanded vision of space.
A short bio
Marie-Luise Heuser studied philosophy, history, physics and mathematics at Heinrich-Heine-University in Düsseldorf. She received her doctorate with a dissertation on Schelling’s philosophy of nature and the physical theories of self-organization. She has been involved in research and teaching at various universities in Germany. From 2002 to 2015, she was a lecturer at the Institute of Philosophy at the Technical University of Braunschweig, where she initiated and organized the transdisciplinary cooperation “Culture and Space Travel” (with weekly lecture series at the “House of Science”, art exhibitions at the University of Fine Arts, and scientific conferences). Since 2015, she has been chair of the Department of Culture and Spaceflight at the Institute of Space Systems at the Technical University of Braunschweig (IRAS). Since 2020 she is chair of the Expert Committee for Spaceflight and Culture at the German Aerospace Society (DGLR), and since 2022 head of the Space Philosophy Laboratory at Space Renaissance International (SRI). She is also a scientific member of the University of Düsseldorf. Her main focus is on the classical philosophy of space travel from antiquity to modern times, a field of research and teaching she founded. The term Transterrestrialism®, which she coined and registered as a word mark, is the name of a new discipline in the cultural sciences and humanities that deals with the philosophical prerequisites and cultural history of space travel, as well as with fundamental paradigm shifts in the image of humanity, in modes of perception and categories of thought, and with the future possibilities of new forms of living and interaction in space. An excerpt list of her publications can be found at https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie-L….
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