Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller biography

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Schiller Biography

SCHILLER, Johann Christoph Friedrich von (1759–1805). A famous German poet and dramatist, born at Marbach, Württemberg, Nov. 10, 1759. Schiller's father was a military surgeon and captain; his mother an innkeeper's daughter, pious and of refined tastes. As a child he showed imagination and desired to become a clergyman, but the autocratic Duke Karl of Württemberg "gently kidnaped" him for his military academy (1773) against his will and his parents' desire. Here, under stern yet somewhat whimsical discipline, Schiller studied the humanities and laws, while reading, with omnivorous hunger, Shakespeare, Lessing, Klopstock, Goethe's Werther, and the sensational Storm and Stress (q.v.) dramas of Klinger and Leisewitz. Clandestinely he began to write, and when, in 1775, the school was moved to Stuttgart, he went over to the study of medicine. But he continued his poetic efforts and in 1777 set to work on Die Räuber, the first of his published plays, intended as an emphatic protest against the existing political conditions of which he had himself been a victim.

On graduating from the ducal school (Dec. 14, 1780) Schiller was forced to take service as regimental surgeon, galled alike by his functions and his dress. His rebellious mood was shown by a poem on the death of his friend Weckerlin, a bitter defiance of society and its conventional creed. Die Räuber, printed at his own expense (1781), made an immediate and deep impression. In a somewhat weakened form it was produced (Jan. 13, 1782) with great applause, though its style was somewhat rough and unpolished and some details of the plot unnatural. Its dramatic form, however, is surprisingly good. Schiller, who had gone surreptitiously to Mannheim for a second time (1781), to witness it, was sentenced to two weeks' arrest and forbidden to publish anything except medical treatises. He escaped from Württemberg (September, 1782) with a romantic friend, Streicher, and after some wandering remained in retirement for a few months with a generous patroness, Frau von Wolzogen, at Bauerbach. An historical drama, Fiesko, was nearly completed at the time of Schiller's escape. This he sold to the Mannheim publisher Schwan for 10 louis and began with fresh enthusiasm a third, Luise Millerin, later called Kabale und Liebe, on local political conditions, and a fourth on Don Carlos, son of Philip II of Spain, in whose tragic fate Schiller's letters show that he had been for some years interested. He also made love to his patroness' daughter, which induced the mother to help him to establish himself at Mannheim (July, 1783), where he had an offer of permanent engagement as dramaturgist, which, however, was canceled after a year. Fiesko was produced in January, 1784, and failed. It was a disguised political manifesto, more radical and democratic than the Mannheim public could appreciate, and it lacked intrinsic value; but it is of interest as Schiller's introduction to historical drama, in which his greatest dramatic successes were later to be achieved. Kabale und Liebe, which was enthusiastically received at Mannheim in April, 1784, was political also, but it was genuinely national and became immediately popular, touching the grander passions of human nature and being recognized as the best German drama of contemporary life.

Under the influence of Wieland (q.v.), Schiller now began to turn Don Carlos into blank verse. He left Mannheim (April, 1785) in debt, but famous, and passed nearly two years in Gohlis, near Leipzig, and in Dresden, in close association with Körner, father of the patriotic poet and himself a Mæcenas, who lent Schiller money. Here Schiller's morbid spirit yielded to the excessive hopefulness voiced in his Ode to Joy (An die Freude) and in some declamatory passages of Don Carlos, which was not finished until May, 1787, for work on it had been interrupted by historical and philosophic studies, as well as by an unfinished attempt at prose romance, Der Geisterseher. A brief passion for Henriette von Arnim was not allowed to interrupt an ardent affection for the fascinating and emancipated Charlotte von Kalb, and this affection contributed not a little towards Schiller's choice of Weimar as his next place of abode (July, 1787).

The success of Don Carlos was Schiller's sufficient passport to the German Athens, whose Duke had already given him a title. Its genuine, heartfelt, and pathetically preposterous enthusiasm for humanity fell in with the spirit of the French Revolution and earned its author, in August, 1792, the honor of French citizenship. Schiller was warmly received in literary Weimar. Herder and Wieland were cordial; Goethe, however, was in Italy. Schiller now turned from the drama to history and in 1788 won scholarly consideration by the first volume of a study of the revolt of the Netherlands from Spain (Geschichte des Abfalls der Niederlande). He completed also as much as he ever wrote of Der Geisterseher and published two short poems, Die Künstler and Die Götter Gretchen-lands, significant because they mark the beginning of the classical influence that was soon to change the whole character of his work. He also did critical work on Wieland's Deutscher Merkur, studied Euripides and Homer, and found new joy of life in the acquaintance of Charlotte von Lengefeld (born Nov. 22, 1766), whom he afterward married. With this inspiration he set to work to write himself out of debt, in the course of which he displeased Goethe by criticism of Egmont. But, though their relations for six years after their first meeting (Sept. 7, 1788) were those of distant courtesy, Goethe procured Schiller an appointment as adjunct professor of history at Jena, then one of the chief university centres of German culture. Here his first lectures were very successful, but, since the position was not a salaried one, his financial embarrassments continued, till relieved by a stipend of 200 thalers, procured as the result of a suggestion from Frau von Stein (q.v.). Soon afterward he married (February, 1790). In the next year overwork brought on illness, from which Schiller never wholly recovered, but a magnanimous gift from Prince Frederick Christian of Holstein-Augustenburg, of 1000 thalers annually for three years, relieved him from pressing burdens. He completed a history of the Thirty Years' War (1793) and drew from the Æsthetics of Kant inspiration for essays on that subject in the literary journals Thalia and Die Horen, that contributed essentially to the development of taste and criticism in Germany. The most remarkable of these, On the Naïve and Sentimental in Poetry (1796), was written after Schiller had formed with Goethe the friendship that was to guide and inspire Schiller's later years.

This period of prose composition had been interrupted in 1793 by illness. Schiller gave up his lectures at Jena and spent a year of travel in search of health. He had now become mentally ripe for intellectual communion with Goethe. Their meeting was a mutual surprise. The acquaintance grew almost immediately to a friendship of rounded completeness; their correspondence extends to more than 1000 letters and is a monument to literary unselfishness. Weimar and Jena being so near to each other, they were constantly together and talked unreservedly of their work and plans. Together they edited Die Horen, and soon, through his Wilhelm Meister, Goethe won Schiller back to poetry. Die Ideale, Das Ideal und das Leben, Der Spaziergang (1795) are witnesses to this new spirit and mark the highest reach of Schiller's philosophic muse. Their common part in the literary controversy of the day is marked also by the 400 Xenien, "parting gifts" of epigram in the Musenalmanach (1797).

And now Schiller was ready for the loftiest flights of his dramatic genius. For 10 years this talent had lain fallow, but they were years of æsthetic ripening. The realistic spirit of Goethe inspiring a great idealist was now to produce the classic Schiller. But first came the great ballad year (1797). While arranging materials for Wallenstein, on which composition was not begun till November, Schiller wrote Der Taucher, Die Kraniche des Ibykus, Der Handschuh, Der Ring des Polykrates, Ritter Toggenburg, and Der Gang nach dem Eisenhammer, all familiar to every German schoolboy and remarkable for depth and intensity. In 1797 Schiller began also that most prized of longer German lyrics, Das Lied von der Glocke (1799), and in 1798 added to the list Die Bürgschaft and Der Kampf mit dem Drachen. In November, 1797, led by Goethe's counsel, he began to cast somewhat in its present form Wallensteins Lager, the introduction to Die Piccolomini, and Wallensteins Tod, and by New Year he told Goethe that he had surpassed his best former self as "the fruit of our intercourse." It was not, however, till September, 1798, that he saw his way clear to the present trilogy, again during a visit to Goethe, and Wallensteins Lager, with the Prolog, was acted at Weimar, Oct. 12, 1798, with great enthusiasm. Die Piccolomini, the trilogy's second part, was furthered also by Goethe at every turn, and so effectively that it was finished by Christmas and acted on Jan. 30, 1799, to a public which seemed awed by a loftier spirit than had yet crossed the German stage. Again Schiller visited Goethe for three weeks in Weimar, and before the end of March Wallensteins Tod was completed. The drama was presented in its complete form April 15, 17, and 20, 1799, ever-memorable days in the annals of Weimar and of the German stage. As an acting play Wallenstein has never been surpassed in Germany. It revealed a new Schiller to the world and to himself. Wallenstein was a drama of the Thirty Years' War, of the inevitable conflict between the old order and the new, between genius and duty, between love and loyalty. Schiller left Weimar resolved to put on the stage the tragedy of Mary of Scotland. Maria Stuart was elaborated during a visit to Goethe, in May, 1799, and acted in June, 1800. His work suffered constant interruptions from ill health, but he had never shown such mastery of the technique of his craft as in Maria Stuart. The versification is smoother than in Wallenstein, the arrangement more artistic, the story more dramatically unfolded, but the conception is inferior, and the chief characters lack tragic depth. It is the pathos of Mary's fate more than its tragic necessity that impresses the spectator. Schiller now occasionally replaced Goethe in the management of the Weimar Court Theatre, and thus found occasion to adapt Shakespeare's Macbeth to its needs. Traces of this work are obvious in his next romantic tragedy, Die Jungfrau von Orleans, an idealization of Joan of Arc, first acted in Leipzig, Sept. 18, 1801. It was an unparalleled popular triumph, for it accorded with the romantic taste. It is now less admired.

In the autumn of 1801 Schiller visited Dresden and was so attracted to ideals of classic art, by what he saw in its museums, that his next drama, Die Braut von Messina, was severely classical in structure and conception. It was not completed until 1803. Herein relentless Nemesis appears in awful simplicity. In stateliness and dignity of diction, in classic calm, the drama is greatly admired in Germany, but it did not win popular applause.

Before Die Braut von Messina had been acted Wilhelm Tell, Schiller's last drama, was already well advanced, and two plays had been adapted from the French of Picard (Encore des Ménechmes as Der Neffe als Onkel and Médiocre et Rampant as Der Parasit). Meantime Schiller had been ennobled. He was glad of it "for Lolo's and the children's sake." Work on the final form of Tell was begun in August, 1803, and the play was finished in February, 1804, after much study for effects of local color and interruptions from the insatiable, inquisitive Madame de Staël, whose society, he told Goethe, was "suffocating." Her departure from Weimar made him feel "as though he had recovered from a severe illness."

Tell is sharply differentiated from all that goes before. Here success crowns a sane activity, fate yields to will, the visionary reformer of Die Räuber and Don Carlos has become a practical realist. This growing serenity well befits the poet's last work and crowning achievement. The story of the Swiss hero struck a patriotic chord, for Germany was then on the eve of her deepest humiliation. No German drama had before nor has since produced so deep or enduring an impression. Schiller was invited to Berlin and royally welcomed. Prostrated by illness on his return, he did little during some months of suffering but sketch out Demetrius, a drama taken from Russian history, showing that his power of tragic conception and dramatic execution was at its highest at his untimely death in Weimar, May 9, 1805.

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XX (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 535-537.