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THE LIFE AND WORKS
OF
FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
By
Calvin Thomas
Professor in Columbia University
To
Eleanor Allen Thomas
Herzelibe frouwe min,
Got gebe dir hiute und iemer guot!
Kunde ich bas gedenken din,
Des haete ich willeclichen muot.
PREFACE
I have wished to give a trustworthy account of Schiller and his works on
a scale large enough to permit the doing of something like justice to
his great name, but not so large as in itself to kill all hope and
chance of readableness. By a trustworthy account I mean one that is
accurate in the matters of fact and sane in the matters of judgment.
That there is room for an English book thus conceived will be readily
granted, I imagine, by all those who know. At any rate Schiller is one
of those writers of whom a new appreciation, from time to time, will
always be in order.
I have thought it important that my work, while taking due note of
recent German scholarship, should rest throughout on fresh and
independent study. Accordingly, among all the many books that have aided
me more or less, I have had in hand most often, next to the works of
Schiller, the collection of his letters, as admirably edited by Jonas.
Among the German biographers I owe the most to Minor, Weltrich and
Brahm, for the period covered by their several works; for the later
years, to Wychgram and Harnack. Earlier biographers, notably Hoffmeister
and Palleske, have also been found helpful here and there.
Of course I have not flattered myself, in writing of a man whose
uneventful career has repeatedly been explored in every nook and cranny,
with any hope of adding materially to the tale of mere fact. One who
gleans after Minor and Weltrich and Wychgram will find little but chaff,
and I have tried to avoid the garnering of chaff. One of my chief
perplexities, accordingly, has been to decide what to omit. If there
shall be those who look for what they do not find, or find what they did
not expect, I can only say that the question of perspective, of the
relative importance of things, has all along received my careful
attention. Thoroughness is very alluring, but life is short and some
things must be taken for granted or treated as negligible. Otherwise one
runs a risk, as German experience proves, of beginning and never
finishing.
My great concern has been with the works of Schiller--to interpret them
as the expression of an interesting individuality and an interesting
epoch. It is now some twenty years since I first came under the
Weimarian spell, and during that time my feeling for Schiller has
undergone vicissitudes not unlike those described by Brahm in a passage
quoted at the very end of this volume. At no time, indeed, could I
truthfully have called myself a "Schiller-hater", but there was a time,
certainly, when it seemed to me that he was very much overestimated by
his countrymen; when my mind was very hospitable to demonstrations of
his artistic shortcoming. Time has brought a different temper, and this
book is the child of what I deem the wiser disposition.
For the poet who wins the heart of a great people and holds it for a
century is right; there is nothing more to be said, so far as concerns
his title to renown. The creative achievement is far more precious and
important than any possible criticism of it. This does not mean that in
dealing with such a poet the critic is in duty bound to abdicate his
lower function and to let his scruples melt away in the warm water of a
friendly partisanship; it means only that he will be best occupied,
speaking generally, in a conscientious attempt to see the man as he was,
to "experience the savor of him", and to understand the national
temperament to which he has endeared himself.
This, I hope, defines sufficiently the spirit in which I have written.
In discussing the plays I have endeavored to deal with them in a large
way, laying hold of each where it is most interesting, and not caring
to be either systematic or exhaustive. Questions of minute and
technical scholarship, such as have their proper place in a learned
monograph, or in the introduction and notes to an edition of the text,
have been avoided on principle. Everywhere--even in the difficult
thirteenth chapter--my aim has been to disengage and bring clearly into
view the essential, distinctive character of Schiller's work; and where
I have had to fear either that the professional scholar would frown at
my sins of omission, or that the mere lover of literature would yawn at
my sins of commission, I have boldly accepted the first-named horn of
the dilemma.
New York, Nov. 6, 1901.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
Parentage and Schooling
Captain Schiller and his wife--Sojourn at Lorch--Traits of
Friedrich's childhood--Removal to Ludwigsburg--Karl Eugen, Duke of
Württemberg--Impressions from court, theater and school--Poetic
beginnings--Duke Karl's change of heart--Franziska von Hohenheim--The
Academy at Solitude--Schiller at the Academy--School exercises--From law
to medicine--Early poems and orations--An ardent friend--Books read and
their effect--Dramatic plans--Dissertation rejected--Genesis of 'The
Robbers'--Morbid melancholy--Release from the Academy--Value of the
education received.
CHAPTER II
The Robbers
General characterization--The Schubart story--Schiller and
Schubart--The contrasted brothers--Comparison with Klinger and
Leisewitz--Influence of Rousseau and Goethe--Unlike earlier attacks
on the social order--Outlawry in the eighteenth century--The
noble bandit in literature--Karl Moor's crazy ambition--His
sentimentalism--Schiller's sympathy with his hero--Character of
Franz--Influence of Shakespeare--Ethical attitude of Franz--A dull
villain--Character of Amalia--The subordinate outlaws--A powerful
stage-play--Defects and merits.
CHAPTER III
The Stuttgart Medicus
Schiller's position at Stuttgart--Personal appearance--Convivial
pleasures--Visits at Solitude--Revision of 'The Robbers' for
publication--The two prefaces--Reception of 'The Robbers'--A stage-version
prepared for Dalberg--Changes in the stage-version--Popularity of
the play--Medicus and poet--The 'Anthology' of 1782--Character
of Schiller's youthful verse--Various poems considered--The songs
to Laura--Poetic promise of the 'Anthology'--Journalistic
enterprises--Schiller as a critic of himself--Quarrel with Duke
Karl--The Swiss imbroglio--The duke implacable--Flight from Stuttgart.
CHAPTER IV
The Conspiracy of Fiesco at Genoa
General characterization--The historical Fiesco--Influence of
Rousseau--The conflicting authorities--Fact and fiction in the play--Not
really a republican tragedy--Character of Fiesco--Of Verrina--Schiller's
vacillation--Fiesco's inconsistency--Lack of historical lucidity--The
changed conclusion--Weak and strong points--Fiesco and the Moor--The
female characters--Extravagant diction.
CHAPTER V
The Fugitive in Hiding
Reception at Mannheim--An elocutionary failure--'Fiesco' rejected by
Dalberg--Refuge sought in Bauerbach--A new friend--Relations
with outside world--Interest in Lotte von Wolzogen--Literary
projects and employments--Beginnings of 'Don Carlos'--Friendly
overtures from Dalberg--Work upon 'Louise Miller'--Jealousy and
resignation--Flutterings of the heart--Departure from Bauerbach
with new play completed.
CHAPTER VI
Cabal and Love
General characterization--English Beginnings of bourgeois
tragedy--'Miss Sara Sampson'--Development of the tragedy
of social conflict--Love in the age of sentimentalism--Rousseau
and the social conflict--Wagner and Lenz--Diderot's 'Father
of the Family'--Gemmingen's 'Head of the House'--Evolution
of Schiller's plan--Debt to predecessors--Hints from Wagner
and Lessing and 'Siegwart'--Weakness of the tragic conclusion--Character
of Louise--Her religious sentimentalism--Fearsomeness--Lack of
mother-wit--A cold heroine--Character of Ferdinand--Sentimental
extravagance--Father and son--Prototypes of President von Walter.
CHAPTER VII
Theater poet in Mannheim
Mannheim in 1783--Dalberg and his theater--The situation on Schiller's
arrival--Letter to Frau von Wolzogen--Contract with Dalberg--Illness and
disappointments--Pecuniary troubles--'Fiesco' on the stage--Triumph of
'Cabal and Love'--Critical notices--Discourse on the theater--Contract
with Dalberg not renewed--Disappointments and distractions--Relations to
women--Charlotte von Kalb--The poems 'Resignation' and 'Radicalism of
Passion'--A friendly message from Leipzig--Project of the _Rhenish
Thalia_--Honored by the Duke of Weimar--Unhappiness and longing for
friendship--Escape from Mannheim.
CHAPTER VIII
The Boon of Friendship
Gottfried Körner and the Stock sisters--Huber--Schiller's arrival in
Leipzig--A proposal of marriage--Sojourn at Gohlis--Schiller and
Körner--An enthusiastic letter--Körner's helpfulness--With the new
friends in Dresden--Influence of Körner--A poetic 'Petition'--The 'Song
to Joy'--Contributions to the _Thalia_--Quickened interest in
history--Letters of Julius and Raphael--'The Ghostseer'
begun--Unwillingness to leave Dresden--A dramatic skit--Affair with
Henriette von Arnim--From Dresden to Weimar.
CHAPTER IX
Don Carlos
Poetic merit of 'Don Carlos'--Its slow genesis--Schiller's
explanation--St. Réal's 'Dom Carlos'--The original plan--Ripening
influences--Decision in favor of verse--Change of attitude toward Carlos
and Philip--Influence of Körner--Completion of the play--Character of
Prince Carlos--The Marquis of Posa--Posa and the king--Posa's heroics in
the last two acts--Character of Philip--General estimate.
CHAPTER X
Anchored in Thuringia
Weimar in Schiller's time--Renewal of relations with Charlotte von
Kalb--First meeting with Herder and Wieland--Visit to Jena--Pleased with
Weimar--New literary pursuits--Visit to Meiningen and introduction to
the Lengefeld family--Charlotte von Lengefeld--A summer idyl--Awakening
interest in the Greeks--First meeting with Goethe--Appointed professor
at Jena--Bitterness toward Goethe--Love, betrothal and marriage--'The
Gods of Greece'--'The Artists'--'The Ghostseer'--The 'Letters on Don
Carlos'--Review of 'Egmont'--'The Misanthrope'--Translations from
Euripides and other minor writings.
CHAPTER XI
Historical Writings
Schiller's merit as a historian--Genesis of 'The Defection of the
Netherlands'--The author's self-confidence--His readableness--Freedom
the animating idea--Attitude toward past and present--Position as a
historian--Too little regard for the fact--First lecture at
Jena--Influence of Kant--Theory of the Fall--The 'Historical
Memoirs'--Inchoate Romanticism--'History of the Thirty Years'
War'--Skill in narrating--Conception of the war as a struggle for
freedom--View of Gustav Adolf.
CHAPTER XII
Dark Days Within and Without
A happy year--Disastrous illness in January, 1791--Feud with
Bürger--Interest in epic poetry--Second illness and desperate
plight--Help from Denmark--Resolution to master Kant's philosophy--Visit
to Suabia--Enterprise of the _Horen_--Attitude toward the
Revolution--Sympathy for Louis XVI.--Prediction of Napoleon--Made a
citizen of the French Republic--Disgust with politics--Program of the
_Horen_--Genius and vocation.
CHAPTER XIII
Aesthetic Writings
Value of philosophy to a poet--Goethe's opinion--Schiller's early
philosophizing--The essays on Tragedy--Plan of 'Kallias'--Kant's
aesthetics--Schiller's divergence from Kant--Beauty identified with
freedom-in-the-appearance--Explication of the theory--Essay on
'Winsomeness and Dignity'--Essay on 'The Sublime'--Remarks on
Schiller's general method--Letters to the Duke of Augustenburg--The
'Letters on Aesthetic Education'--Some minor papers--Essay on 'Naïve
and Sentimental Poetry'.
CHAPTER XIV
The Great Duumvirate
Goethe and Schiller--Six years of aloofness--Beginning of intimacy--The
'happy event'--Campaign for the conquest of Goethe---Schiller, on
Goethe's genius--A friendly relation established--Comparison of the
duumvirs--Fortunes of the _Horen_--Return to poetry--Significance of the
essay on 'Naive and Sentimental Poetry'--Goethe on Schiller's
theory--Enemies assail the _Horen_--The Xenia planned in retaliation--A
militant league formed--The fusillade of the Xenia--Effect of the
Xenia--Return to the drama--Further relations of Goethe and Schiller.
CHAPTER XV
Later Poems
General character of Schiller's poetry--'The Veiled Image at Sais'--'The
Ideal and Life'--Idealism of Goethe and Schiller--'The Walk'--Poems of
1796--'Dignity of Women'--'The Eleusinian Festival'--The
ballads--Attitude toward the present--Lyrics of thought--'The Maiden's
Lament'--Popularity of Schiller's cultural poems--'The Song of the
Bell'--Latest poems.
CHAPTER XVI
Wallenstein
General characterization--Preparatory studies--Difficulties of the
subject--Study of Sophocles and Aristotle--Decision in favor of
verse--Completion of the play--'Wallenstein's Camp'--The historical
Wallenstein--Schiller's artistic achievement--Character of
the hero--His impressiveness--Effect of contrast--Octavio
Piccolomini--Max Piccolomini--Max and Thekla--Lyrical passages--Absence
of humor and irony.
CHAPTER XVII
Mary Stuart
Genesis of the play--Schiller's removal to Weimar--'Mary Stuart'
characterized--The fundamental difficulty--Unhistorical
inventions--Effect of these--The meeting of the queens--Character of
Elizabeth--Romantic tendencies--Mary conceived as a purified
sufferer--Pathos of the conclusion--Ugly portrait of Elizabeth
accounted for--The historical background--Dramatic qualities--Character
of Mortimer.
CHAPTER XVIII
The Maid of Orleans
Variety in Schiller's work--Genesis of 'The Maid of Orleans'--Schiller's
Johanna--Miraculous elements--Attitude of the critics--Difficulty of the
subject--Johanna's tragic guilt--Her supernatural power--The scene with
Lionel--Schiller's poetic intention--A drama of patriotism--The
subordinate characters--Excellence of the composition.
CHAPTER XIX
The Bride of Messina
Genesis of the play--General characterization--Disagreement of the
critics--Relation to Sophocles--Substance of the plot--Ancients and
moderns--Fate and responsibility--Schiller's invention--Unnaturalness of
the action--Strange conduct of Don Manuel, Beatrice and the
mother--Lavish use of silence--Schiller's contempt of realism--Don
Cesar's expiatory death the real tragedy--Use of the fate idea--Apologia
for the chorus--Poetic splendor.
CHAPTER XX
William Tell
'Tell' and 'The Robbers'--General characterization--Genesis--Attention
to local color--An interruption--Success on the stage--The theme of
'Tell'--A drama of freedom--The play intensely human--Goodness of the
exposition--Departures from usual method--Character of Tell--The
apple-shooting scene--The scene in the 'hollow way'--Tell's long
soliloquy--Introduction of Parricida--Bertha and Rudenz.
CHAPTER XXI
The End.--Unfinished Plays and Adaptations
A Russian theme chosen--Berlin negotiations--Work on 'Demetrius'--'The
Homage of the Arts'--Last illness and death--The unfinished
'Demetrius'--The historical Dmitri--The original plan modified--Character
of the hero--Poetic promise of 'Demetrius'--'Warbeck'--'The Princess
of Celle'--'The Knights of Malta'--Other unfinished plays--Adaptation
of 'Egmont'--Of 'Nathan the Wise'--Of 'Macbeth'--Of 'Turandot'--Interest
in the French drama--Adaptations from the French.
CHAPTER XXII
The Verdict of Posterity
Schiller a national poet--His idealized personality--Estimate of
Dannecker--Of Madame de Staël--Goethe's 'Epilogue'--Controversy over
Goethe and Schiller--Attitude of Schlegel--Of Menzel--Goethe's
loyalty to his friend--The mid-century epoch--Unreasonable
criticism--Interesting prophecy of Gervinus--Schiller's aesthetic
idealism often misunderstood--Schiller as a friend of the
people--Partisan misconceptions--The enthusiasm of 1859--Epoch of the
philologers--Present opinion of Schiller--Conclusion.
LIVE AND WORKS OF SCHILLER
CHAPTER I
Parentage and Schooling
Nur, Vater, mir Gesänge.
_From the poem 'Evening', 1776._
When the Austrian War of Succession came to an end, in the year 1748, a
certain young Suabian who had been campaigning in the Lowlands as army
doctor was left temporarily without employment. The man's name was
Johann Kaspar Schiller; he was of good plebeian stock and had lately
been a barber's apprentice,--a lot that he had accepted reluctantly when
the poverty of a widowed mother compelled him to shift for himself at an
early age. Having served his time and learned the trade of the
barber-surgeon, he had joined a Bavarian regiment of hussars. Finding
himself now suddenly at leisure, after the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, he
mounted his horse and rode away to the land of his birth to visit his
relations. Reaching Marbach--it was now the spring of 1749--he put up at
the 'Golden Lion', an inn kept by a then prosperous baker named Kodweis.
Here he fell in love with his landlord's daughter Dorothea, a girl of
sixteen, and in the course of the summer married her. He was at this
time about twenty-six years old. He now settled down In Marbach to
practice his crude art, but the practice came to little and Kodweis soon
lost his property in foolish speculation. So the quondam soldier fell
out of humor with Marbach, went into the army again, and when the Seven
Years' War broke out, in 1756, he took the field with a Württemberg
regiment to fight the King of Prussia. He soon reached the grade of
lieutenant, in time that of captain; fought and ran with his countrymen,
at Leuthen, floundered at peril of life in the swamps of Breslau and
otherwise got his full share of the war's rough-and-tumble. From time to
time, as the chance came to him, he visited his young wife in Marbach.
These were the parents of the poet Schiller, who was born November 10,
1759, ten years after Goethe, ten years before Napoleon. It is worth
remembering that he who was to be in his way, another great protestant
came into the world on an anniversary of the birth of Lather. He was
christened Johann Christoph Friedrich.
The childhood of little Fritz unfolded amid conditions that must have
given to life a rather somber aspect. After the close of the war Captain
Schiller moved his little family to Lorch, a village some thirty miles
east of Stuttgart, where he was employed by the Duke of Württemberg in
recruiting soldiers for mercenary service abroad. This hateful business,
which was in due time to form a mark for one of the sharp darts of
'Cabal and Love', seems to have been managed by him with a degree of
tact and humanity; for he won the esteem of all with whom he had to do.
At home, being of a pious turn and setting great store by the formal
exercises of religion, he presided over his household in the manner of
an ancient patriarch. Between him and his son no very tender relation
ever existed, though the poet of later years always revered his father's
character. The child's affections clung rather to his mother, whom he
grew up to resemble in form and feature and in traits of character. She
was a woman of no intellectual pretensions, but worthy of honor for her
qualities of heart.[1] Of education in the modern sense she had but
little. Her few extant letters, written mostly in her later years, tell
of a simple and lovable character, tenderly devoted to husband and
children. Tradition credits her with a certain liking for feeble poets
of the Uz and Gellert strain, but this probably did not amount to much.
Her sphere of interest was the little world of family cares and
affections. Her early married life had been darkened by manifold sorrows
which she bore at first with pious resignation, becoming with the flight
of time, however, more and more a borrower of trouble.[2] At Lorch her
trials were great, for Captain Schiller received no pay and the family
felt the pinch of poverty. Here, then, was little room for that merry
comradeship, with its _Lust zum Fabulieren_, which existed between the
boy Goethe and his playmate mother at Frankfurt-on-the-Main.
In after-time, nevertheless, Schiller was wont to look back upon the
three years at Lorch as the happiest part of his childhood. The village
is charmingly situated in the valley of the Rems, a tributary of the
Neckar, and the region round about is historic ground. A short walk
southward brings one to the Hohenstaufen, on whose summit once stood the
ancestral seat of the famous Suabian dynasty, and close by Lorch is the
Benedictine monastery in which a number of the Hohenstaufen monarchs are
buried. Here was the romance of history right at hand, but we can hardly
suppose that it meant much to the child. The Middle Ages were not yet in
fashion even for adults, and little Fritz had other things to think of.
With his sister Christophine, two years older than himself, he was sent
to the village school, where he proved so apt a pupil that his parents
became ambitious for him and sent him to the village pastor, a man named
Moser, to be taught Latin. The child looked up to his august teacher and
resolved to become himself some day a preacher of the word. Not much is
known of Moser, but to judge from his namesake in 'The Robbers', where
all passions and qualities are raised to the _n_th power, he must have
been a man for whom the reproof of sinners was not only a professional
duty but a personal pleasure. The plan of making their Fritz a man of
God was eagerly embraced by the pious parents and became a settled
family aspiration.
The boy himself was very susceptible at this time to religious
impressions. Sister Christophine carried with her through life a vivid
memory of his appearance at family worship, when the captain would
solemnly intone the rimed prayers that he himself had composed for a
private ritual. 'It was a touching sight', she says in her
recollections[3] of this period, 'to see the reverent expression on the
child's winsome face. The pious blue eyes lifted to heaven, the light
yellow hair falling about his forehead, and the little hands folded in
worship, suggested an angel's head in a picture.' From the same source
we learn that Fritz was very fond of playing church, with himself in the
role of preacher. Another reminiscence tells how he one day ran away
from school and, having unexpectedly fallen under the paternal eye in
his truancy, rushed home to his mother in tearful excitement, got the
rod of correction and besought her to give him his punishment before his
sterner parent should arrive on the scene. Still another, from a
somewhat later period, relates how the mother was once walking with her
children and told them a Bible story so touchingly that they all knelt
down and prayed. This is about all that has come down concerning
Schiller's early childhood. He may have seen the passion-play at Gmünd,
but this is uncertain. In any case it only added one more to the
religious impressions that already dominated his life.
Toward the end of the year 1766, having exhausted his private resources
at Lorch, Captain Schiller applied for relief and was transferred to
duty at Ludwigsburg, where the family remained under somewhat more
tolerable conditions for about nine years. At Ludwigsburg he began to
interest himself in agriculture and forestry. In 1769 he published
certain 'Economic Contributions', which exhibit him as a sensible,
public-spirited man, eagerly bent upon improving the condition of
Suabian husbandry. In 1775, having become known as an expert in
arboriculture, he was placed in charge of the ducal forests and
nurseries at Castle Solitude, and there he spent the remainder of his
days in peaceful and congenial activity. He died in 1796.
For the impressionable Fritz one can hardly imagine a more momentous
change of environment than this which took him from a quiet rural
village to the garish Residenz of a licentious and extravagant prince.
Karl Eugen,[4] Duke of Württemberg, whom men have often called the
curse, but the gods haply regard as the good genius, of Schiller's
youth, came to power in 1744 at the age of sixteen. The three preceding
years he had spent at the Prussian court, where Frederick the Second
(not yet the Great) had taken a deep interest in him and tried to teach
him serious views of a ruler's responsibility. But the youth had no
stomach for the doctrine that he was in the world for the sake of
Württemberg. Having come to his ducal throne prematurely, through the
influence of the King of Prussia, he began well, but after a few years
shook off the restraints of good advice and entered upon a course of
autocratic folly that made Württemberg a far-shining example of the
evils of absolutism under the Old Régime. Early in his reign he married
a beautiful and high-minded princess of Bayreuth, but his profligacy
soon drove her back to the home of her parents. Then a succession of
mistresses ruled his affections, while reckless adventurers in high
place enjoyed his confidence and fleeced the people at pleasure. To
gratify his passion for military display he began to raise unnecessary
troops and to hire them out as mercenaries. In 1752 he agreed with the
King of France, in consideration of a fixed annual subsidy, to supply
six thousand soldiers on demand. The money thus obtained was mostly
squandered upon his private vices and extravagances. On the outbreak of
the Seven Years' War the French king demanded the promised troops; and
so it came about that the Suabian Protestants were compelled, in
defiance of public sentiment, to make war against their co-religionists
of Prussia. In the inglorious campaigns which followed, the Duke of
Württemberg cut a rather sorry figure, but criticism only exasperated
him. He promised another large body of troops to France, and the men
were raised by harsh measures of conscription. The Estates of the duchy
protested against this autocratic procedure, and, as Stuttgart sided
with the opposition, the duke determined to punish his unruly capital by
removing his court to Ludwigsburg, where an ancestor of his, early in
the century, had founded a city to match Versailles and serve the
express purpose of a 'Trutz-Stuttgart'.
The removal of the court to Ludwigsburg took place in 1764, three years
before the Schiller family found a home there. From the first a purely
artificial creation, the little city had been going backwards, but it
now leaped into short-lived glory as the residence of a prodigal prince
who was bent on amusing himself magnificently. The existing ducal palace
was enlarged to huge dimensions and lavishly decorated. Great parks and
gardens were laid out, the market-place was surrounded with arcades, and
an opera-house was built, with a stage that could be extended into the
open air so as to permit the spectacular evolution of real troops.
Everything about the place was new and pretentious. The roomy streets
and the would-be gorgeous palaces, flaunting their fresh coats of yellow
and white stucco, teemed with officers in uniform, with blazing little
potentates of the court and with high-born ladies in the puffs and
frills of the rococo age. Here Karl Eugen gave himself up to his dream
of glory, which was to rival the splendors of Versailles. He maintained
a costly opera, procuring for it the most famous singers and dancers in
Europe, and squandered immense sums upon 'Venetian nights' and other
gorgeous spectacles. For all this barbaric ostentation the people of
Württemberg were expected to foot the bills. 'Fatherland!' said his
Highness, when a protest was raised on behalf of the country, 'Bah! I am
the fatherland.'
Here it was, then, that the young Friedrich Schiller got his first
childish impressions of the great world; of sovereignty exercised that a
few might strut in gay plumage while the many toiled to keep them in
funds; of state policies determined by wretched court intrigues; of
natural rights trampled upon at the caprice of a prince or a prince's
favorite. There is no record that the boy was troubled by these things
at the time, or looked upon them as anything else than a part of the
world's natural order. It is a long way yet to President von Walter.
The house occupied by Captain Schiller at Ludwigsburg was situated close
by the theater, to which the duke's officers had free admission. As a
reward of industry little Fritz was allowed an occasional evening in
front of the 'boards that signify the world'. The performances, to be
sure, were French and Italian operas, wherein the ballet-master, the
machinist and the decorator vied with one another for the production of
amazing spectacular effects. People went to stare and gasp--the language
was of no importance. It was not exactly dramatic art, but from the
boy's point of view it was no doubt magnificent. At any rate it made him
at home in the dream-world of the imagination, filled his mind with
grandiose pictures and gave him his first rudimentary notions of stage
effect. We are not surprised to learn, therefore, that in his home
amusements playing theater now took the place of playing church. Sister
Christophine was a faithful helper. A stage could be made of big books,
and actors out of paper. When the puppet-show was outgrown, the young
dramatist took to framing plays for living performers of his own
age,--with a row of chairs for an audience, and himself as manager and
protagonist.
Christophine relates that her brother's fondness for this sort of
diversion lasted until he was thirteen years old. In the mean time,
however, his chosen career was kept steadily in view. He was sent to the
Latin school, from which, if his marks should be good, he might hope to
advance in about five years to one of the so-called convent schools of
Württemberg. After this his theological education would proceed for
about nine years more at the expense of the state. The Ludwigsburg
school was a place in which the language of Cicero and the religion of
Luther were thumped into the memory of boys by means of sticks applied
to the skin; Fritz Schiller was a capable scholar, though none of his
teachers ever called him, as in the case of the boy Lessing at Meissen,
a horse that needed double fodder. The ordinary ration sufficed him, but
he memorized his catechism and his hymns diligently, fussed faithfully
over his Latin longs and shorts, and took his occasional thrashings with
becoming fortitude. On one occasion we hear that he was flogged by
mistake and disdained to report the incident at home. Religious
instruction consisted of mechanical repetition insisted on with brutal
severity,--a mode of presenting divine things that must have contrasted
painfully, for the sensitive boy, with his mother's simple religion of
the heart. When it is added that he was often nagged and punished by a
too exacting father, we get a not very sunny picture of our poet's
boyhood. It is told,[5] and it may well be true, that he was subject to
fits of moodiness, in which he would complain of his lot and brood
gloomily over his prospects. Nevertheless a schoolmate[6] has left it on
record that Schiller as a lad was normally high-spirited, a leader in
sports as well as in study, and very steadfast in his friendships.
While at Ludwigsburg he read from the prescribed Latin authors,
making the acquaintance of Ovid, Vergil and Horace, and in time won
praise for his facility in writing Latin verses. Some of his school
exercises have chanced to be preserved. The earliest, dated Jan. 1,
1769, is a Latin translation in prose of some verses which seem to have
been supplied by his teacher for the purpose. The handwriting and the
Latin tell of faithful juvenile toil and moderate success--nothing more.
Nor can we extract much biographic interest from the later distichs and
_carmina_ which he turned out at school festivals. Such things have
flowed easily from the pen of many a bright schoolboy whom the bees of
Hymettus failed to visit.
According, to Schiller's own testimony[7] his earliest attempt at German
verse was made on the occasion of his confirmation, in April, 1772. On
the day before the solemn ceremony he was playing about with his
comrades in what seemed to his mother an all too worldly frame of mind.
She rebuked him for his unseasonable levity, whereat the youngster went
into himself, as the Germans say, and poured out his supposed feelings
in a string of verses so tender and soulful as to draw from his amazed
father the exclamation: 'Fritz, are you going crazy?'
After such a beginning we are not surprised to learn that German poetry
made its first strong appeal to him through the pious muse of Klopstock.
His earliest more ambitious note is heard in a 'Hymn to the Sun',
written in his fourteenth year. It is the note of supernal religious
pathos. In rimeless lines of unequal length he celebrates the glory of
God in the firmament, soars into celestial space and winds up with a
vision of the last great cataclysm. All this is sufficiently
Klopstockian, as is also the boyish dream of an epic about Moses, and of
a tragedy to be called 'The Christians'.
But the time came when our young psalmodist of Zion was to be pulled out
of his predetermined course and made to sing another song. Were the
overruling powers malign or benevolent? Who shall say, remembering the
Greek proverb that a man is not educated save by flaying? Let us not
pause to speculate; but proceed as quickly as may be across the interval
that separates these innocent religious effusions from the opening of a
great literary career with the cannon-shot of 'The Robbers'.
About the year 1770 Duke Karl began to undergo a change of heart.
Wearying at last of life's vanities and frivolities, the middle-aged
sinner took up virtue and philanthropy, as if to show mankind that he
too could be a benevolent father to his people. The new departure was
due in part to the political success of the Estates in curbing his
extravagance, but rather more, no doubt, to the personal influence of
his mistress, Franziska von Hohenheim. This lady, whose maiden name was
Bernerdin, had been given in marriage as a girl of sixteen to a
worthless Baron von Leutrum, who misused her. Escaping from him with
thoughts of divorce in her mind, she went to visit friends in
Ludwigsburg. Here the inflammable duke fell in love with her, and, after
a not very tedious resistance, carried her away to his castle. This was
in 1772. Her divorce followed soon after, and she remained at court as
the duke's favorite mistress. He presently procured for her an imperial
title, that of Countess Hohenheim, and after the death of his duchess,
in 1780, he married her. She was not beautiful or talented, but she
possessed amiable qualities that made and kept her the object of Karl's
honest affection. She knew how to humor his whims without crossing his
stubborn will, and she chose to exert her influence in promoting humane
enterprises and leading her liege lord in the paths of virtuous
frugality. On the whole, the people of Württemberg, who had suffered
much from mistresses of a different ilk, had reason to bless their
ruler's fondness for his amiable 'Franzele'. She was not unworthy to sit
for the portrait of Lady Milford.
An educational project, the founding of a school which later came to be
known as the Karlschule, marks the beginning of the duke's career in
his new rôle. He began very modestly in the year 1770 by gathering a
few boys, the sons of officers, at his castle called Solitude, and
undertaking to provide for their instruction in gardening and forestry.
This Castle Solitude was itself an outcome of the same lordly mood that
had led to the removal of the court to Ludwigsburg. It was situated on
a wooded height some six miles west of Stuttgart. Here, by means of
forced labor and at enormous expense,--and this was only one of many
similar building enterprises,--he had cleared a site in the forest and
erected a huge palace which, according to the inscription over the
door, was to be 'devoted to tranquillity'. But how was a prince to
enjoy tranquillity without the necessaries of life? In a short time a
score of other buildings, including an opera-house and a barracks, had
sprung up about the castle in the woods, while an immense outlying
tract had been converted into a park with exotic attractions in the
style of the time. Here, then, was need of expert forestry--whence the
opening of the school as aforesaid. Once started, it became the duke's
special pet and pride. His immense energy had found a new fad--that of
the schoolmaster. He was bent on having a model training-school for the
public service. In his own house, under his own eye, he proposed to
mould the future servants of the state like potter's clay. In this way
he would have them as he wanted them. To provide the clay for his
experiment he began to look around for promising boys, and thus his eye
fell on Friedrich Schiller. Summoning the father and making some
gracious inquiries, he offered to provide for the boy's education at
the new school. The anxious captain, knowing that divinity was not to
be on the program at Castle Solitude, sought to evade his sovereign's
kindness by pleading that Fritz had set his heart upon the service of
the church. The reply was that something else, law for example, would
no doubt do as well. Resistance to the earthly Providence was not to be
thought of by a man in Captain Schiller's position; and so the step was
taken which deprived some Suabian flock of a shepherd and gave the
world instead a great poet.
It was on the 17th of January, 1773, that schoolboy Schiller, with
disappointment in his heart, said farewell to his tearful mother and
took his cold way up the long avenue which led from Ludwigsburg to
Castle Solitude. According to the official record he arrived there with
a chillblain, an eruption of the scalp, fourteen Latin books, and
forty-three kreutzers in money. Soon afterwards his father signed a
document whereby he renounced all control of the boy and left him in the
hands of his prince.
The school at Solitude had now come to be known as the Military
Academy, and well it deserved its name. The duke himself was the
supreme authority in large matters and in small. The nominal head,
called the intendant, was a high military officer who had a sufficient
detail of majors, captains and lower officers to assist him in
maintaining discipline. Under the eye of these military potentates the
_élèves_, as they were called,--for the official language of the school
was French,--lived and moved in accordance with a rigid routine. They
rose at six and marched to the breakfast-room, where an overseer gave
them their orders to pray, to eat, to pray again, and then to march
back. Then there were lessons until one o'clock, when they prepared for
the solemn function of dinner. Dressed in the prescribed uniform,--a
blue coat with white breeches and waistcoat, a leather stock and a
three-cornered hat, with pendent queue and at each temple four little
puffs,--they marched to the dining-room and countermarched to their
places. When his Highness gave the command, _Dinez, messieurs_, they
fell to and ate. From two to four there were lessons again, then
exercise and study hours. At nine they were required to go to bed.
There were no vacations and few holidays. Visits to and from parents
were prohibited, and letters sent or received had to be submitted to
the Intendant. Books of a stirring character were proscribed, along
with tobacco and toothsome edibles, and quarters were often searched
for contraband articles. Whoso transgressed received a 'billet', which
he took to headquarters. Punishments were numerous, if not very severe,
and were sometimes administered by his Highness in person. The duke
wished his protégés to regard him as their father, but his system
tended to the encouragement not so much of honest gratitude as
of rank sycophancy. On occasion he could be very gracious and
condescending,--would take the youngsters into his carriage, give
them fatherly counsel, box their ears, suggest subjects for essays,
offer himself as opponent at their disputations, and so forth. He
was very proud of showing off the school to visitors. His birthday
and Franziska's were festal occasions, at which he would distribute
the prizes in person and allow the winners, if of gentle birth, to
kiss his hand; if commoners, to kiss the hem of his garment.
A modern reader will be very ready with his criticism of these
educational arrangements. The constant and petty surveillance, the
deliberate alienation of boys from all ties of home and kindred, the
systematic training in duplicity and adulation, were certainly not well
calculated for a school of manhood. Schiller himself, after his escape
from the academy, was wont to speak very bitterly of the education that
he had received there. Nevertheless the school had its good points,
especially after the removal to Stuttgart, in 1775. Here it became a
combination of university (minus the theological faculty) with a school
of art, a school of technology and a military academy proper. Several of
the professors were inspiring teachers who made friends of their
students. The fame of the institution brought together promising young
men from all parts of Germany and from foreign parts; and several of
them besides Schiller attained distinction in after-life.[8] There was
thus intellectual comradeship of the very best kind. And there was much
freedom in the choice of studies.
But the solid merits of the academy were the growth of time; in the
beginning it was, for Schiller at least, mere chaos and misery. The boy
grew rapidly into a lank, awkward youngster for whom the military
discipline was a great hardship; he never got entirely rid of the stiff
gait and ungainly bearing which resulted from these early struggles with
the unattainable. Frequent illness led to a bad record on the books of
the faculty. In 'conduite' he made but a poor showing, and he was
several times billeted for untidiness. In Latin and religion he got
along fairly well, and in Greek he actually took a prize toward the end
of the year 1773. But the Greek which procured him this distinction
hardly went beyond the rudiments and was mostly brought with him from
Ludwigsburg. For mathematics he had but little talent. His bitterest
trial, however, came with the law studies which he was obliged to take
up in his second year. A dry subject, a dull teacher and an immature,
reluctant pupil made a hopeless combination. And so he got the name of a
dullard. During the whole of the year 1775 it is recorded that he was at
the foot of his class.
Two bits of writing have come down to give us a glimpse of the boy's
mind during these two years of helpless floundering. A detestable
practice of the school authorities required the pupils to criticise one
another in moral disquisitions. On one occasion the duke gave out the
theme: 'Who is the meanest among you?' Schiller did his task in Latin
distichs which have been preserved. They show a healthy feeling for the
odiousness of the business, but he cleverly shifts the responsibility to
_Dux serenissimus_, who must of course know what is good for him. Then
he proceeds to depict one Karl Kempff as the worst boy in
school,--_defraudans socios, rudis ignarusque_,--but he hopes that the
wretched sinner will yet mend his ways and become worthy of his gracious
prince's favor.
In a much longer prose document he portrays the characters of some two
score schoolmates and finally his own. He begins modestly with a
deprecatory address to his most gracious sovereign, without whose wise
order he would never think of setting himself up as a judge of his
fellows. The portraits are amusingly ponderous in style, but their
substance is very creditable to their author's head and heart. Toward
the end he burns more incense to the duke: 'This prince who has enabled
my parents to do well by me; this prince through whom God will attain
his ends with me; this father who wishes to make me happy, is and must
be much more estimable to me than parents who depend upon his favor.' He
frankly confesses his own shortcomings: 'You will find me', he writes,
'often overhasty, often frivolous. You will hear that I am obstinate,
passionate and impatient; but you will also hear of my sincerity, my
fidelity and my good heart.' He owns that he has not thus far made the
best use of his gifts, but he pleads illness in excuse. His gracious
prince knows how eagerly he has taken up the study of the law and how
happy he will be some day to enter the service of his country. But, he
ventures to insinuate, he would be very much happier still if he could
serve his country as a teacher of religion.
The divinity was out of the question, but relief was at hand. Toward the
end of 1775, having come to terms with the Stuttgart people, Duke Karl
transferred his academy to more commodious quarters in the city. A
department of medicine was added and Schiller gladly availed himself of
the duke's permission to enroll in the new faculty. His professional
studies were now more to his taste and he applied himself to them with
sufficient zeal to make henceforth a decent though never a brilliant
record. His heart was already elsewhere. For some time past he had been
nourishing his soul on forbidden fruit,--books that had to be smuggled
in and were of course all the more seductive for that very reason. With
a few intimates--Scharffenstein, the Von Hovens and Petersen--he formed
a sort of literary club which read and discussed things. What they read
spurred them to imitation and to mutual criticism. Presently they
commenced sending their productions to the magazines. Schiller began to
indulge in pleasing dreams of literary fame; and with this new-born
confidence in himself there came, as his health improved, a firmer step,
a more erect bearing and an increased energy of character. To be a poet
by grace of God was better than the favor of princes.
For some time, however, the youth's effusions gave little evidence of a
divine call. His first poem to get into print was the one entitled
'Evening', which appeared in Haug's _Suabian Magazine_ in the autumn of
1776. In irregular rimed verses--the rimes often very Suabian--we hear
of sunset glories producing in the bard a divine ecstasy that carries
him away through space. Then he returns to earth and hears in the voices
of evening a general symphony of praise. It is still the Klopstockian
strain of magniloquent religiosity, tempered somewhat by the influence
of Haller. In 'The Conqueror', a poem published in 1777, the
Klopstockian note is still more audible. The form is a pseudo-antique
strophe such as Klopstock often used; the substance a rhetorical
denunciation of military ambition. The most awful curses are imprecated
upon the head of the ruthless 'conqueror', whose badness is portrayed in
lurid images and wild syntax that fairly rack the German language.[9] No
wonder that editor Haug cautioned the young poet against nonsense,
obscurity and exaggerated metatheses.
Nor is there much more of promise in the few occasional poems that have
come down from Schiller's salad days in the academy. One of them was
inspired by a visit of the emperor Joseph, whom our poet glorifies in
strains almost too fervid for utterance.[10] The other two are birthday
greetings to Franziska von Hohenheim--effusions of 'gratitude', as it is
called. The gratitude purports to come, in one of the poems, from the
_école des demoiselles_, which Franziska had founded as a feminine
pendant to the academy. Schiller's verses, truth to tell, sound like
rank fustian. The duke's mistress is glorified as a paragon of virtue.
'Her sweet name flies high on the wings of glory, her very glance
promises immortality. Her life is the loveliest harmony, irradiated by a
thousand virtuous deeds.' And so on. As poetic spokesman of the girls he
pours out those 'Elysian feelings' which he supposes them to cherish
toward their kind and virtuous 'mother'.
There are two or three extant school orations which likewise exhibit
him in the rôle of a fervid eulogist. The rhetoric of them is very
highfalutin, and the flattery would be nauseating if one did not
remember that it was largely a matter of fashion. Custom required that
a prince be addressed in the language of adulation, and nothing in that
line was too extravagant for the taste of the time. As for Schiller, he
had got the reputation of an orator and he only did what was expected
of him as the public representative of the school. Nor should we think
too harshly of the duke for encouraging the foolishness, since he too
only conformed to the custom of the Old Regime. At the same time it is
a pleasure to learn from certain well authenticated anecdotes that he
and his _élèves_ did not always live in a fool's paradise of
sycophancy. There is a story, vouched for by Weltrich, to the effect
that Schiller, who had acquired fame as a mimic, was one day asked by
the duke, with Franziska on his arm, to give an impromptu specimen of
his powers by imitating his sovereign. The youth hesitated, but after
some urging borrowed the duke's cane and proceeded to examine him. As
his Highness did not answer well, Schiller exclaimed: 'Oh, you are an
ass!' Then he took Franziska's arm and began to walk away with her.
Serenissimus looked on with mixed emotions, but only said: 'Come now,
leave Franzele to me!'
The young Schiller was nothing if not intense. When an emotion took
possession of him it set him on fire, and the expression of it was like
the eruption of a volcano. Toward the end of his course at the academy
he had a misunderstanding with his dear friend Scharffenstein, with whom
he had sworn eternal brotherhood. The result was a long letter of wild
expostulation in this vein:
What was the bond of our friendship? Was it selfishness? Was it
frivolity? Was it folly? Was it an earthly, vulgar, or a higher,
immortal, celestial bond? Speak! Speak! Oh, a friendship erected
like ours might have endured through eternity.... If you or I had
died ten times, death should not have filched from us a single hour!
What a friendship that might have been! And now! Now! What has
become of it?... Hear, Scharffenstein! God is there! God hears me
and thee, and may God judge!
And so on for six mortal pages, octavo print. The modern cynic will
smile at this ecstatic cultus of friendship, but let him at the same
time recall the saying of Goethe that what makes the poet is a heart
completely filled with one emotion.[11]
It is now time to glance at the really important phase of Schiller's
youthful development--his reading. While his native Suabia, just then
rather backward in literary matters, was still chewing the cud of pious
conventionality, a prodigious ferment had begun in the outside world.
What is called the 'Storm and Stress' was under way. The spirit of
revolt, which in France was preparing a political upheaval, was abroad
in Germany, where it found expression in stormy or sentimental plays and
novels,--works composed on the principle that everything is permissible
except the tame and the conventional. The productions of these young
innovators differed widely from one another, but they had a common note
in their vehement would-be naturalism. There were over-wrought pictures
of daring sin and terrible punishment; novels and plays laying bare the
_misère_ of the social conflict; tragedies of insurgent passion at war
with conventional ideas; of true love crossed and done to death by the
prejudice of caste. And so forth.
How much of this literature fell into the hands of Schiller at the
academy can not be told with perfect certainty, but it would seem that
very little of it escaped him. He read and was deeply touched by
Gerstenberg's 'Ugolino', with its horrific picture of the agonies of
starvation. He read the early writings of Goethe, of Leisewitz and of
Klinger, and was touched by the woes of Miller's Siegwart. In 'Emilia
Galotti', with its drastic comment upon the infamies of princely lust,
he saw the subject of court life in a light very different from that in
which it habitually appeared to the carefully guarded pupils of the
Stuttgart academy. He became acquainted with Ossian, and the shadowy
forms of the Celtic bard, big with their indefinable woe, increased the
turmoil of his soul. Probably he read Rousseau more or less, though
direct evidence of the fact is lacking. At any rate the air was
surcharged with Rousseauite feeling. Certainly he read Plutarch and
Cervantes, and along with all these came Shakspere,[12] to whom he was
introduced--in the Wieland translation--by his favorite teacher, Abel.
The effect of this reading upon the mind of Schiller was prodigious. It
changed the native docility of his temper, weaned him completely from
his seraphic proclivities and carried him with a rush into the
mid-current of the literary revolution. There came a time when the young
medical student, faithfully pursuing his routine and on festal occasions
spouting fervid panegyrics of the noble Karl and the divine Franziska,
was not altogether what he seemed to be. There was another Schiller,
burning with literary ambition and privately engaged in forging a
thunderbolt.
Two dramatic attempts preceded 'The Robbers'. The first had to do with
Cosmo dei Medici; the second, called 'The Student of Nassau', was based
upon a newspaper story of suicide. Both were destroyed by their
disgusted author, in what stage of progress we do not know. Still he was
not discouraged; the tragic drama was clearly his field and he might
succeed better the next time. But where to find a subject? His
perplexity became so great that, as he said later, he would have given
his last shirt for a good theme. Finally, in the year 1777, his friend
Hoven drew his attention to a story by Schubart that had lately been
published in the _Suabian Magazine_,--a story of a father and his two
dissimilar sons, one of them frank and noble-minded but wild, the other
a plausible moralist but at heart a scoundrel. Schiller took the hint
and began to write, his interest being no doubt increased by the
miserable fate of Schubart, who was then languishing in the Hohenasperg
as the helpless victim of Karl Eugen's pusillanimous tyranny.[13]
Just how much progress was made with 'The Robbers' in the year 1777 is
not known; probably not much, for Schiller soon decided to drop his
literary pursuits for the present and devote himself closely to his
medical studies. Perhaps he may have hoped by hard work to finish his
course in four years instead of the expected five. At any rate he now
bent to his toil and allowed the play to lie dormant in his mind. In
1779 he submitted a thesis on 'The Philosophy of Physiology', but it was
judged unfit for print. The professors condemned it variously as
tedious, florid, obscure, and, worst of all, disrespectful toward
recognized authorities such as Haller. In these judgments the duke
concurred. He found that Elève Schiller had said many fine things and in
particular had shown much 'fire'. But the fire was too strong; it needed
to be 'subdued' by another year of study.
It has usually been assumed by Schiller's biographers that in his
intense longing for liberty he was embittered by this disappointment,
and that in his mood of wrath he now took up his neglected play and
poured into it, hissing hot, the whole fury of his quarrel with the
world. There is, however, no evidence that he really hoped to win his
release from the academy in the year 1779, or that the thesis just
spoken of was regarded as a graduation thesis.[14] Neither his own
letters nor those of his friends indicate that he was angry at being
kept in school another year. Probably the critics have made too much
out of this factor of personal disgruntlement. Schiller was a poetic
artist, and his first play is much more than the wild expression of a
plucked student's resentment. Nevertheless it is only natural to
suppose that his proud and ambitious spirit chafed more or less under
the requirements of an academic routine that his manhood had
outgrown. That he succeeded after all, at the end of the year 1779,
in capturing a number of prizes and received them in the presence of
Goethe and the Duke of Weimar, who happened just then to be visiting
Stuttgart, could do but little to sweeten the bitter dose that had
been prescribed for him.
He now set about the preparation of a new thesis, and in the intervals
of his professional occupation he worked with feverish energy upon 'The
Robbers'. To gain time for writing he would often feign illness, and
when the duke or an inspector surprised him would hide his manuscript in
a big medical treatise kept at hand for the purpose. A few comrades who
were in the secret eagerly watched the progress of his work and
vociferously applauded the scenes which he now and then read to them.
One of these comrades has left it on record that in the excitement of
composition Schiller would often stamp and snort and roar.--And thus it
was, in the stolen hours of the night and driven by the demon that
possessed him, that he bodied forth his titanic drama of revolt. It was
virtually finished during the year 1780. In after-time Schiller reasoned
himself into the conviction that art must be 'cheerful',[15] but very
little of cheerfulness went to the composition of 'The Robbers'. It was
the disburthening of an oppressed soul that suffered horribly at times
from morbid melancholy--the chicken-pox of youthful genius. A letter of
June, 1780, shows how he had battled with the specters of despair.
Writing to Captain von Hoven, whose son had lately died, he says:
A thousand times I envied your son as he was wrestling with death,
and would have given up my life as calmly as I go to bed. I am not
yet twenty-one years old, but I can tell you frankly that the world
has no further charm for me. I have no delight in thinking of the
world, and the day of my departure from the academy, which a few
years ago would have been a day of festal joy, will not be able to
force one happy smile from me. With each step, as I grow older, I
lose more and more of my contentedness; and the nearer I come to the
age of maturity, the more I could wish that I had died in childhood.
This sounds gloomy enough, but the desperate mood did not last long, A
number of medical reports written in the summer of 1780 indicate that
Schiller was able to take the calm professional view of a case very
similar to his own. A fellow-student named Grammont was afflicted with
hypochondria, and Schiller was set to watch him. His analysis of the
case is eminently sane. He finds it difficult to decide whether the
young man's malady has its seat in the mind or in the bowels: whether
too much brooding over hard problems has ruined his digestion and
given him a headache, or whether a physical derangement has confused
his ideas of duty and religion. He thinks there is a fair chance of
curing the patient by means of medicine and good advice.--A youth who
can talk thus of another's _Weltschmerz_ is himself in no great danger
from the malady.
In November, 1780, he submitted a new thesis upon 'The Connection
between Man's Animal and Spiritual Nature'. In this essay he considers
the question whether, for the purposes of moral perfection, the body is
to be regarded as the enemy and gaoler of the soul, or as its friend and
coadjutor. The drift of his argument is to show in detail the dependence
of the spirit upon the flesh. Finding that philosophers have been unjust
to the body, he comes to its rescue,--expounding good doctrine in an
interesting though rather florid and unprofessional style. In the course
of his philosophizing he perpetrates the sly joke of quoting from his
own manuscript play and ascribing the words to an imaginary 'Life of
Moor', by one Krake.--Further comment upon the essay may be dispensed
with,[16] seeing that Schiller as a medical man does not greatly
interest us at the present time. Enough that it was accepted and
procured him his release from bondage toward the close of the year.
Afterwards, in the bitterness of his quarrel with the Duke of
Württemberg, Schiller took an altogether gloomy view of the training he
had received at the Military Academy. He saw only the forcing process to
which he had been subjected, the narrow life that had kept him from a
knowledge of the world, and the petty restrictions that had prevented
his love of poetry from developing in a sane and natural manner.
However, it is always the poet's fate to grow strong through his own
gifts and his own trials; what schools of any kind can do for him or
against him is of comparatively little moment. Had Schiller enjoyed in
his youth the freedom of a real university, his literary career would no
doubt have opened differently, and with another beginning the whole
would have been different; but whether it would then have interested the
world after a hundred years, as that of the real Schiller does, is a
question for omniscience. Speaking humanly one can only say that the
misguided paternalism of Karl Eugen in rousing the tiger proved a
blessing in disguise. And the schooling itself was by no means so
despicable. Schiller left the academy a good Latinist, though with but
little Greek. He had learned to read French, if not English. He had
dabbled in such philosophy as there was going and acquired an interest
in the fundamental problems. He had read not widely but intensely--which
is always better. He had made a number of good friends. And not least
important for his future career, he had had an excellent opportunity to
observe the forms and usages of high life.[17]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: What is known of her has been put together by Ernst Müller,
in "Schillers Mutter, ein Lebensbild", Leipzig, 1894.]
[Footnote 2: "Unsere Mutter nährt sich gleichsam von beständiger Sorge",
wrote her son to his sister in 1784.]
[Footnote 3: As quoted by Schiller's sister-in-law, Karoline von
Wolzogen, in her 'Life of Schiller', first published in 1830. The
Baroness von Wolzogen quoted from a manuscript by Christophine, which
was at that time in the family archives and has since been published in
the _Archiv für Litteraturgeschichte_, I, 452. Christophine wrote down
her recollections in order to counteract the false stories of Schiller's
childhood which began to get into print soon after his death. Of this
character, for example, is the oft-repeated tale of his climbing a tree
during a thunder-storm in order to see where the lightning came from.
This is an invention of Oemler, his earliest biographer, who invented
much besides.]
[Footnote 4: An excellent account of him is to be found in Vol. 15 of
"Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie".]
[Footnote 5: By Schiller's youthful friend Petersen, _Morgenblatt_,
1807; quoted by Weltrich, "Friedrich Schiller", I, 77, and by other
biographers.]
[Footnote 6: Wilhelm von Hoven, quoted by Karoline von Wolzogen.]
[Footnote 7: As reported by his friend Conz, _Morgenblatt_, 1807. Cf.
Weltrich, p. 80, foot-note.]
[Footnote 8: For example: Cuvier, Dannecker and the musician Zumsteeg.
The pros and cons of the Karlschule are discussed very fully by Weltrich
and also by Minor in their biographies of Schiller.]
[Footnote 9: For example:
Und mit offenem Schlund, welcher Gebirge schluckt,
Ihn das Weltmeer mir nach,--ihn mir der Orkus nach
Durch die Hallen des Todes--
Deinen Namen, Eroberer!]
[Footnote 10: Weltrich, p. 182, argues that the poem is spurious. The
question is hard to decide.]
[Footnote 11: "Götz von Berlichingen", Act I.]
[Footnote 12: The acquaintance began, it would seem, in 1775 or 1776. At
first Schiller was repelled by Shakspere's 'coldness',--his intermixture
of humor and buffoonery with pathos. Of this first impression he wrote
many years later, in his essay on 'Naïve and Sentimental Poetry', as
follows: "Durch die Bekanntschaft mit neueren Poeten verleitet, in den
Werken den _Dichter_ zuerst aufzusuchen, _seinem Herzen_ zu begegnen ...
war es mir unertraglich, dasz der Poet sich hier gar nirgends fassen
liesz und mir nirgends Rede stehen wollte. Mehrere Jahre hatte er meine
ganze Verehrung, und war mein Studium, ehe ich sein Individuum lieb
gewinnen konnte. Ich war noch nicht fähig, die Natur aus erster Hand zu
verstehen."]
[Footnote 13: Schubart's crime was the utterance of a mild poetic
lampoon to the effect that 'when Dionysius of Syracuse was compelled to
go out of the tyranny business he became a Schulmeisterlein.' He had
also commented too frankly on the duke's relation to Franziska. Angered
by these things Karl caused him to be tricked over the borders into
Württemberg, seized, and without trial shut up in the dungeon of
Hohenasperg, where he was kept for ten years (1777-1787). Schiller
visited him in November, 1781, and was received with tears of joy as the
author of 'The Robbers'.]
[Footnote 14: Cf. Weltrich, I, 278.]
[Footnote 15: "Ernst ist das Leben, heiter ist die Kunst."--_Prologue to
'Wallenstein'_.]
[Footnote 16: Weltrich, I, 298 ff., analyzes it and discusses its
scientific value at some length.]
[Footnote 17: Kuno Fischer, "Schiller-Schriften", I, 139, has some very
interesting remarks on this subject. "Woher gewann er [says Fischer],
der Sohn eines Dorfbarbiers,... eine solche sichere und eingelebte
Anschauung, ich möchte sagen, Fühlung fürstlichen Wesens, wenn nicht
Herzog Karl, ein Meister in der Kunst fürstlichen Repräsentierens, ihn
zum Modell gedient hätte?"]