During the nineteenth century, Novalis was primarily seen as a passionate love-struck poet who mourned the death of his beloved and yearned for the hereafter. He was known as the poet of the " blue flower", a symbol of romantic yearning from Novalis's unfinished Novel "Heinrich von Ofterdingen" that became an key emblem for German Romanticism. His fellow Jena Romantics, such as Friedrich Schlegel, Tieck, and Schleiermacher, also describe him as a poet who dreamt of a spiritual world beyond this one. Novalis's diagnosis of tuberculosis, which was known as the "white plague", contributed to his romantic reputation. Because Sophie von Kühn was also thought to have died from tuberculosis, Novalis became the poet of the blue flower who was reunited with his beloved through the death of the white plague.