At the fourth colloquium of the international Arnim Society in Glasgow, the central issues were biographical and national identity, culture- and socio-political codification, and marginalization and communality. Alongside comparative studies concentrating on intertextuality, there were also a number of interdisciplinary contributions largely concerned with the historical, political, social, and cultural contexts. Among the Romantics, the crisis occasioned by the Napoleonic wars strengthened the recourse to their own literary traditions and the highly problematic (from a 20th century viewpoint) reception accorded to those traditions. Experience of other cultures (Arnim's image of England, Jews and gypsies in Arnim's works) differentiated the formation of identity on the national, communitarian, and individual plane. There is also discussion of the reasons for a shift to aesthetic identifications (as opposed to philosophical and/or political alternatives). Other case studies are devoted to the narrative construction of artistic, social, amicable, and gender-based identity.

The volume contains Achim von Arnim's (1781-1831) writings during the period of his school and university education, between 1791 and 1800. With a few exceptions the texts are previously unpublished. They range from prescribed exercises and copied extracts to independently formulated essays and speeches on social, historical, philosophical and criminal law themes, partly with fictional or autobiographical content. The volume offers insight into Arnim's educational development, formatively influenced by the Late Enlightenment in Berlin, and documents both his interest in science and his inclination towards art.