In German Romantic literature, Jewish mysticism was also a source of inspiration for Christian authors such as Novalis, F. Schlegel, Brentano, Arnim, and E.T.A. Hoffmann. Whereas for Romantic theologians and philosophers the Kabbala represented the primal religious doctrine of humanity and a bridge between Rabbinic tradition and Christianity, the literary fraternity saw in it both an esoteric Jewish doctrine of the arcane and the magical and a trope for the mysterious power of language and writing to transcend rationalism and conscious authorial intention.

The religious interest in natural philosophy, magic, pantheism, mystic language theories and symbolism, theogony and cosmogony displayed by many German Romantic authors was a response to what Hegel called the 'aridity of the Enlightenment'. This interest led to a rediscovery of cabbala. Among Jewish Romantics, and to an even greater extent among Christian Romantics, Jewish mysticism became not only a source of religious, philosophical, and artistic inspiration, but also a subject of scholarly and philosophical debate. In 1991 the hitherto largely neglected interconnections between cabbala and the history of scholarship, literature, and ideas in the Romantic period were the subject of two interdisciplinary symposia at the University of Kassel and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.