Abstract: In my dissertation 'Ein unendlicher Dialog: Das Projekt der Frühromantik in den 'Athenaeums-Fragmenten'' (“An Infinite Dialogue: The Project of Early Romanticism in the 'Athenaeum-Fragments''), I argue that the Early Romantic project initiated by Friedrich Schlegel understands itself as a quest for complete communication (vollendete Mitteilung ) between perfect and autonomous individuals that leads to an infinite textual dialogue and demands to be understood by the reader by reconstructing and participating in this dialogue. What does it mean to strive for complete communication and in what sense does such striving lead to an 'infinite dialogue'? Why can the reader understand this dialogue only by participating in it? What does it mean to participate in a textual dialogue? And what kind of understanding does such a dialogic reading produce? These are the major questions that my dissertation seeks to answer, and it does so by participating in the dialogue of Early Romanticism itself, alternately identifying with the position of the speaker and the listener. As a major example for this dialogue, I cite the 'Fragments'---the collection of aphorisms that Friedrich Schlegel edited and published in his and his brother August Wilhelm Schlegel's Athenaeum -journal. My participatory approach to Early Romanticism is not a naïve surrender to the project and its claims, but rather a conscious hermeneutical decision to understand it on its own terms. Indeed a reader who remains distant from the Early Romantics' own ambitions contradicts the implicit assumption of universal participation, and she thereby diminishes her ability to understand these ambitions from the outset. I specifically challenge current interpretations that either uphold Early Romanticism as a model for the emancipation of society or censure its ostensibly idealist, irrational and antifeminist nature, as well as those readers who claim objectivity and neutrality. Hence, by reconstructing the Early Romantic authors' dialogue, my dissertation enables a new critical assessment of their project.