Postpositive adjectives are a current element of modern language usage and as such have already entered the research discussion. However, their appearance in historical sources is only dealt with in passing und brushed aside as antiquated - a gap which is to be filled by this corpus-based investigation into postpositive adjectives in poetry written in New High German between 1700 and 1930. The twenty most frequently occuring adjectives in the corpus will be examined for syntactic, pragmatic-semantic, and chronological aspects. In this paper, a throrough syntactic categorisation of noun-adjective relations is made and the reasons for postpositioning are emphasised (rhyme, metrics, and the textual distance of the adjective to the nominal antecedent, which is determined by the accentuated position). Finally, a diachronic consideration with reference to Middle High German and the Ancient World demonstrates the preference of the Romantics for postpositive adjectives.