1803, now chiefly remembered as containing the piece called Sanct Hansaften-Spil. The next two years saw the production of several exquisite works, in particular the epic of Thors Reise til Jotunheim, the poem in hexameters called Langelandsreisen, and the bewitching fantasy Aladdin (1805). At the age of twenty-six, Oehlenschläger was universally recognised, even by the opponents of the romantic revival, as the leading poet of Denmark. He now collected his Poetical Writings in two volumes. He found no difficulty in obtaining a grant for foreign travel from the government, and he left Denmark for the first time, joining Steffens at the University of Halle in August 1805. Here he wrote the first of his great historical tragedies, Hakon Jarl, which he sent off to Copenhagen, and then proceeded for the winter months to Berlin, where he associated with Wilhelm von Humboldt, Johann Gottlieb Fichte and met Goethe for the first time. In the spring of 1806 he went on to Weimar, where he spent several months in daily intercourse with Goethe. Autumn of that year was passed with Tieck in Dresden, and he proceeded in December to Paris. Here he resided eighteen months and wrote his three famous masterpieces, Baldur hin Gode (1808), Palnatoke (1809), and Axel og Valborg (1810). Oehlenschläger had also made his own translation of Aladdin into German, adding some new material which does not appear in the 1805 edition; this revised version was published in Amsterdam in 1808. Ferruccio Busoni later used the text of this translation for the last (choral) movement of his Piano Concerto Op. 39. Later editions of Oehlenschläger's play do not contain this text. In July 1808 he left Paris and spent the autumn and winter in Switzerland as the guest of Madame de Staël at Coppet, in the midst of her salon. In the spring of 1809, Oehlenschläger went to Rome to visit Bertel Thorvaldsen, and in his house wrote the tragedy of Correggio. He hurriedly returned to Denmark in the spring of 1810, partly to take the chair of aesthetics at the University of Copenhagen, partly to marry the sister-in-law of Knud Lyne Rahbek, to whom he had been long betrothed. His first course of lectures dealt with his Danish predecessor Johannes Ewald, the second with Schiller. From this time forward his literary activity became very great; in 1811 he published the Oriental tale of Ali og Gulhyndi, and in