Given their literary and philosophical achievements, German Romanticism and German Idealism enjoy a good reputation, covering up the political and ideological virulence that its main protagonists – such as Schlegel, Hegel and Heine – had to face. This article distinguishes between Romantic and Romanticism. Schlegel devised a typology of Romantic art. This European art form, which developed under the preserve of Christianity, gradually lost its sacred character as it became modern. Romanticism, well characterized by Heine`s “Romantic School,” is the conversion of this Romantic aesthethic into a medievalizing and conservative ideology in the context of a political culture hostile to German Enlightenment, which was criticized by Heine for historical, political and social reasons, and by Hegel for philosophical reasons. In terms of philosophy, the Romantic thought criticized by Hegel was not that of Schlegel but that of Schelling.