A traveler bravely trotted up the hill. Absorbed in the enjoyment of the splendor surrounding him and in fantasies that swept him forward or backward, he had missed the right path, and now he suddenly found himself in front of a forest that he had to ride through if he did not want to turn around and ride back; there was no other way to be found. He was doubtful for a long time.
“Turning back now would be a useless piece of work. Would I have come here for nothing? I came to this forest in roughly the same way I came to life... I probably missed the path altogether. And how? if it were impossible for me to return here as well as there? Let my journey be like my life and like all of nature, inexorably forward!

These are the thoughts of the protagonist in the novel Florentin by Dorothea Schlegel, born Brendel Mendelssohn in 1764. The young adventurer tries to travel "inexorably forward", but a wild boar soon thwarts his plans. The unfinished novel revolves around the question of whether it is just chance or fate at work. In Florentin's life story, a delicate love affair and ghosts also provide suspense. Theodor Storm compared the novel to Goethe's Wilhelm Meister.

Florentin was published anonymously in 1801. Dorothea Schlegel's husband Friedrich is listed as the publisher, but the author's name remains unnamed. Some of her texts have never been published, others are out of print. For example, her much-read story of the wizard Merlin, in which she adapted the old French Arthurian story for the present day. The fact that Dorothea Schlegel also shaped Romanticism with her own works, reviews and translations was quickly forgotten. Yet she was far more than just a roommate in the romantic Jena shared flat. She outlived her husband by ten years and died in Frankfurt in 1839. The couple always had money worries, and her will bears witness to the fact that Dorothea Schlegel endeavored to pay Friedrich's debts until the end.