Friedrich Schiller

Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (November 10, 1759 – May 9, 1805), usually known as Friedrich Schiller, was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and dramatist. During the last several years of his life (1788–1805), Schiller struck a profound friendship with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, with whom he discussed much on issues concerning aesthetics, encouraging Goethe to finish works he left merely as sketches; this thereby gave way a period now referred to as Weimar Classicism. They also worked together on Die Xenien (The Xenies), a collection of short but very critical/satiric poems in which both Schiller and Goethe verbally attacked those persons they perceived to be enemies of their aesthetic agenda.

Biography

He was born in Marbach, Württemberg (located at the river Neckar in South West Germany, north of Stuttgart, the former Region of Swabia), as the only son, beside five sisters, of military doctor Johann Kaspar Schiller (1733-1796), and Elisabeth Dorothea Kodweiß (1732-1802). On 22 February of 1790, he married Charlotte von Lengefeld (1766-1826). Four children were born between 1793 and 1804, the sons Karl and Ernst, and the daughters Luise and Emilie. The grandchild of Emilie, Baron Alexander of Gleichen-Rußwurm, died in 1947 at Baden-Baden, Germany, as the last living descendant of Schiller.

His childhood and youth were spent in relative poverty, although he attended both village and Latin schools, and coming to the attention of Karl Eugen, Duke of Württemberg, entered the Karlsschule Stuttgart (an elite military academy founded by Duke Karl Eugen), in 1773, where he eventually studied medicine. During most of his short life, he suffered from illnesses that he tried to cure himself.

While at the arduous school, he read Rousseau and Goethe and discussed Classical ideals with his classmates. At school, he wrote his first play, Die Räuber (The Robbers), about a group of naïve revolutionaries and their tragic failure.

In 1780, he obtained a post as regimental doctor in Stuttgart, a job he disliked.

Following the performance of Die Räuber in Mannheim, in 1781, he was arrested and forbidden to publish any further works. He fled Stuttgart, in 1783, coming via Leipzig and Dresden to Weimar, in 1787. In 1789, he was appointed professor of History and Philosophy in Jena, where he wrote only historical works. He returned to Weimar, in 1799, where Goethe convinced him to return to playwriting. He and Goethe founded the Weimar Theater which became the leading theater in Germany, leading to a dramatic renaissance. He remained in Weimar, Saxe-Weimar until his death at 45 from tuberculosis.

Philosophical papers

Schiller wrote many philosophical papers on ethics and aesthetics. He synthesized the thought of Immanuel Kant with the thought of Karl Leonhard Reinhold.He developed the concept of the Schöne Seele (beautiful soul), a human being whose emotions have been educated by his reason, so that Pflicht und Neigung (duty and inclination) are no longer in conflict with one another; thus "beauty," for Schiller, is not merely a sensual experience, but a moral one as well: the Good is the Beautiful. His philosophical work was also particularly concerned with the question of human freedom, a preoccupation which also guided his historical researches, such as The Thirty Years War and The Revolt of the Netherlands, and then found its way as well into his dramas (the "Wallenstein" trilogy concerns the Thirty Years War, while "Don Carlos" addresses the revolt of the Netherlands against Spain.) Schiller wrote two important essays on the question of the Sublime (das Erhabene), entitled "Vom Erhabenen" and "Über das Erhabene"; these essays address one aspect of human freedom as the ability to defy one's animal instincts, such as the drive for self-preservation, as in the case of someone who willingly dies for a beautiful idea.

The Aesthetic Letters

A pivotal work by Schiller was On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a series of Letters, (Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen) which was inspired by the great disappointment Schiller felt about the French Revolution. He had hoped that it would be an American-style revolution, leading to the formation of a constitutional republic. Instead, it became a bloodbath. Schiller wrote that "a great moment has found a little people," and wrote the Letters as a philosophical inquiry into what had gone wrong, and how to prevent such tragedies in the future. In the Letters he asserts that it is possible to elevate the moral character of a people, by first touching their souls with beauty, an idea that is also found in his poem Die Künstler (The Artists): "Only through Beauty's morning-gate, dost thou penetrate the land of knowledge."

On the philosophical side, Letters put forth the notion of Stofftrieb ("the sensuous drive") and Formtrieb ("the formal drive"). In a comment to Immanuel Kant's philosophy, Schiller transcends the dualism between Form and Stoff, with the notion of Spieltrieb ("the play drive") derived from, as are a number of other terms, Kant's The Critique of the Faculty of Judgment. The conflict between man's material, sensuous nature, and his capacity for reason (Formtrieb being the drive to impose conceptual and moral order on the world), Schiller resolves with the happy union of Form and Stoff, the "play drive," which for him is synonymous with artistic beauty, or "living form." On the basis of Spieltrieb, Schiller sketches in Letters a future ideal state (an utopia), where everyone will be content, and everything will be beautiful, thanks to the free play of Spieltrieb. Schiller's focus on the dialectical interplay between Form and Stoff has inspired a wide range of succeeding aesthetic philosophical theory.

Ennoblement

File:1964-DDR-10.jpg

10 Mark banknote from East Germany of 1964 showing Friedrich Schiller

For his achievements, Schiller was ennobled, in 1802, by the Duke of Weimar. His name changed from Johann Christoph Friedrich Schiller to Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller.

Quotations

"Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain." — Maid of Orleans
"The voice of the majority is no proof of justice"
"Deeper meaning resides in the fairy tales told me in my childhood than in any truth that is taught in life."

Musical settings of Schiller's poems and stage plays

Ludwig van Beethoven said that a great poem is more difficult to set to music than a merely good one, because the composer must improve upon the poem. In that regard, he said that Schiller's poems were greater than those of Goethe, and perhaps that is why there are relatively few famous musical settings of Schiller's poems. Two notable exceptions are Beethoven's setting of An die Freude (Ode to Joy) in the final movement of the Ninth Symphony, and the choral setting of Nänie by Johannes Brahms. Giuseppe Verdi admired him greatly and adapted several of Schiller's stage plays for his operas.

Carleton College tradition

At Carleton College in Minnesota a bust of Friedrich Schiller, known simply as "Schiller," appears frequently, though briefly, at large campus events. Once Schiller appears, students rush in to steal Schiller and become the new bust guardians.

Works

Plays

Die Räuber (The Robbers) (1781)
Kabale und Liebe (Intrigue and Love) (1784)
Don Carlos, Infant von Spanien (Don Carlos) (1787)
Wallenstein (1800) (translated from a manuscript copy into English as The Piccolomini and Death of Wallenstein by Coleridge in 1800)
Die Jungfrau von Orleans (The Maid of Orleans) (1801)
Maria Stuart (Mary Stuart) (1801)
Turandot (1802)
Die Braut von Messina (1803)
Wilhelm Tell (William Tell) (1804)
Demetrius (unfinished at his death)

Histories

Geschichte des Abfalls der vereinigten Niederlande von der spanischen Regierung or The Revolt of the Netherlands
Geschichte des dreissigjährigen Kriegs or A History of the Thirty Years' War
Über Völkerwanderung, Kreuzzüge und Mittelalter or On the Barbarian Invasions, Crusaders and Middle Ages

Translations

Prose

Der Geisterseher or The Ghost-Seer (unfinished novel) (started in 1786 and published periodically. Published as book in 1789)
Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen (On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a series of Letters), 1794

Poems

An die Freude or Ode to Joy (1785) which became the basis for the fourth movement of Beethoven's ninth symphony
The Artists
The Cranes of Ibykus
The Bell
Columbus
Hope
Pegasus in Harness
The Glove
Nänie which Brahms set to music