This book presents the first systematic overall view of the genesis and form of what has long been discussed by researchers under the heading of “German Orientalism”. Focussing historically on the early 19th century, the author sketches the literary, academic and political conditions under which the modern German image of the Orient has been constituted, and in the process proposes a fundamental theoretical revision to the key text in oriental research, Edward Said’s Orientalism. Detailed individual studies on Goethe’s ?West-östlicher Divan’, Hauff’s fairy-tales and the oriental fantasies at the Prussian court map out the possible boundaries of an orientalist aesthetic.