In 1847, the German physician and physicist Hermann von Helmholtz published "Uber die Erhaltung der Kraft" (On the Conservation of Force) in Berlin, presenting the first comprehensive and mathematically rigorous formulation of the law of conservation of energy. Drawing on his medical knowledge of animal heat and metabolism, his studies of electrical and mechanical phenomena, and the work of Joule and Mayer, Helmholtz demonstrated that all forms of energy, including electrical, mechanical, thermal, and chemical, were interconvertible and conserved in quantity. This work in Berlin became one of the foundational texts of modern physics.

Helmholtz's conservation of energy principle, which stated that no energy is ever lost but only transformed from one form to another, became one of the most influential scientific ideas in nineteenth-century literature. The concept that all force is conserved resonated with literary themes of immortality, spiritual continuity, and the persistence of love beyond death that pervade Victorian poetry, particularly the work of Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Emily Bronte. Helmholtz himself was a central figure in Berlin's intellectual life, and his later work on the physiology of vision and hearing directly influenced the Symbolist movement's theories of aesthetic perception.