When he was twelve, Novalis was put under the charge of his uncle Friedrich Wilhelm Freiherr von Hardenberg, who lived at his rural estate in Lucklum. Novalis's uncle introduced him to the late Rococo world, where Novalis was exposed to enlightenment ideas as well as the contemporary literature of his time, including the works of the French Encyclopedists, Goethe, Lessing and Shakespeare. At seventeen, Novalis attended the Martin Luther Gymnasium in Eisleben, near Weissenfels where his family had moved in 1785. At the gymnasium, he learned rhetoric and ancient literature.