Many of Niethammer’s friends and acquaintances were part of an extended gang with Jena connections. Schiller was a university colleague there, Hölderlin, Fichte and Novalis are famously supposed to have spent an evening together at Niethammer’s, and on Saturdays, Schiller and Schelling played cards with him. Niethammer was one of Hegel’s closest friends, and helped him get various jobs. Hegel wrote to him admiringly of Napoleon whom he’d just seen — Napoleon’s army was fighting the Prussians just outside Jena, and duly won; helpfully for Hegel, who was trying to finish a book, without closing down the university.