In 1971 singer Jürgen Wenzel and bassist Heino Schünzel placed an ad in the Hamburger Abendblatt newspaper looking for like-minded people to form a band. Organist Lutz Rahn and drummer Hartwig Biereichel answered the ad. They called themselves Mosaik, started rehearsing and playing smaller gigs. At the suggestion of their friend and guitarist Carlo Karges (later a bandmember of Nena), they changed their name to Novalis. In 1973 the band signed a contract with Brain Records and Jochen Petersen (later keyboarder with Randy Pie) produced their debut album Banished Bridge at the Chameleon Studios in Hamburg. The album was recorded completely without electric guitars, the centerpiece being the 17-minute title track Banished Bridge. The music is slightly fragile, flowing, almost lyrical. The floating synthesizer and keyboard passages are reminiscent of the early works of Pink Floyd and Genesis. A debut album that already showed where the band would later go. Banished Bridge remained Novalis' only English-language record, but for many it is still considered a classic of German progressive rock.After the debut album in 1973, guitarist Detlef Job joined Novalis, while frontman Jürgen Wenzel left the band. Schünzel and Job took over the vocal parts, and from then on they sang very lyrical lyrics in German. During the work on the second album, Carlo Karges also participated as guitarist, keyboard player and composer, but left the band again in 1975. In 1976 Austrian singer Fred Mühlböck joined the band. In 1985 Novalis said goodbye with the album Nach uns die Flut.
