Friedrich Schiller (1759 – 1805) |
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (1759 – 1805), usually known
as Friedrich Schiller, was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and dramatist.
Life
He was born in Marbach (located in Germany's Stuttgart Region), the son of the military
doctor, J. C. 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.
While at the arduous school, he read Rousseau and Goethe
and discussed Classical ideals with his classmates. At school, he wrote his first play, The
Robbers, about a group of naïve revolutionaries and their tragic failure.
In 1780 he obtained a post as regimental doctor in Stuttgart.
Following the performance of Die Räuber (The Robbers) 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.
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. He remained in
Weimar until his death at 45 from tuberculosis.
The Schiller Family
Schiller was the only son, beside five sisters, of Johann Kaspar Schiller (1733-1796), and
Elisabeth Dorothea Kodweiß (1732-1802). On February 1802 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. He was the last living descendant of Schiller. The
closest living relatives of Schiller are the descendants of his father's brother, most of which
emigrated from Germany to Australia. Many members of this lineage have continued the literary
tradition of the Schiller family. The most well known Schiller alive today is the acclaimed
poet, short story writer and essayist, Matt Schiller, who currently resides in New South Wales.
Schiller's Work
Schiller wrote many philosophical papers on ethics and aesthetics, finding that beauty must
be conceived in the mind by applying reason to the senses and emotions. 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. His philosophy glorified heroic statesmanship and helped to oppose the
oligarchical duchies of his time to create the Weimar Renaissance.
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
Kant's dualism between Form and Stoff, with the notion of Spieltrieb ("the play drive") as a
source of beauty and contentment. 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. Being a typical construct of philosophical romanticism,
Schiller's focus on the dialectical interplay between Form and Stoff has inspired a wide range
of succeeding aesthetic philosophical theory.
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 Nanie by Johannes Brahms. Giuseppe Verdi admired him very much and adapted several of
Schiller's stage plays for his operas.
Banknote showing Friedrich Schiller:
10 Mark 1964 (GDR)
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