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JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER

J

(1759-1805)

BY E. P. EVANS

OHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER was born November 10th, 1759, at Marbach, a small town of Würtemberg situated near the junction of the Murr and the Neckar. He was the second child and only son of Johann Caspar Schiller, a worthy man of humble origin, but of sterling character and superior abilities; who began his career as barber and cupper, was advanced to surgeon in a Bavarian regiment of hussars, received the rank of captain and finally of major, and died as landscape gardener in the service of the Duke of Würtemberg. Schiller's mother, Elizabeth Dorothea Kodweiss, the daughter of an innkeeper in Marbach, was a woman of warm affections, as well as a person of uncommon intelligence and fine taste, with a special fondness for poetry, in which she showed a discrimination rare in people of her class. Both parents were sincerely and even fervently pious, and wished that their son should study theology; and this desire corresponded to his own early inclinations. He afterwards abandoned divinity for jurisprudence, and then exchanged law for medicine, before finding his true vocation in literature.

The dull military drill and preceptorial pedantry of the school founded by Duke Karl, and entered by Schiller at the age of fourteen, were extremely irksome to him, and tended to repress and stunt rather than to cherish and develop the natural propensities and powers of his mind. His love of letters, and especially his passion for poetry, could be gratified only by stealth, or by the feint of a headache or a sore throat, which enabled him to evade for a few hours the stern eye of the pedagogical task-master and to devote himself to his favorite pursuits in his own room. But notwithstanding these depressing circumstances, his genius kept its native bent with laudable firmness, and he succeeded in cultivating the best literature of his day,- Klopstock's 'Messias,' Goethe's 'Götz von Berlichingen' and 'Werther,' Miller's 'Siegwart,' Müller's 'Faust,' Gerstenberg's 'Ugolino,' Leisewitz's Julius von Tarent,' Lessing's dramas, Klinger's tragedies, and other products of the "storm and stress" period; and Shakespeare, through the somewhat imperfect medium of Wieland's translation. To his over-intense and effusive

sentimentalism the ruggedly healthy English poet seemed cold and cynical, and the introduction of clowns and fools with their jests in the most pathetic scenes of 'Hamlet' and 'King Lear' jarred upon his sensibilities; but as he afterwards confesses, this indignation had its source in his own limited knowledge of human nature.

He left the Ducal Academy December 14th, 1780, as a doctor of medicine, and even practiced this profession for a time as assistant surgeon in a grenadier regiment at a salary of eighteen florins ($7.50) a month. Meanwhile, when he was scarcely eighteen years of age, he had written The Robbers'; the existence of which he prudently kept secret until after his graduation, and then, not being able to find a publisher, printed it at his own expense, and even borrowed the money for this purpose. This play, in which not only his hatred of the galling personal restraints and daily vexations he had suffered, but also the restless and impetuous spirit of the storm and stress movement, found vigorous expression, excited great enthusiasm in Germany, and was soon translated into the principal languages of Europe. It also made a strong but by no means favorable impression on the mind of the Duke of Würtemberg, who punished the author with a fortnight's arrest for going clandestinely to Mannheim to see it performed in January 1782, and forbade him "henceforth and forever to compose comedies or anything of the sort." Having before his eyes the fate of the poet Schubart, whom for a less heinous offense the same paternal sovereign had confined for ten years in the fortress of Hohenasperg, he took advantage of some public festivity on September 17th, 1782, to slip out of the gates of Stuttgart and flee to Mannheim, beyond the reach of Würtemberg bailiffs.

'The Robbers' is a work of unquestionable but undisciplined genius; a generous wine in the first stages of fermentation. The characters are the mental creations of an ardent and enthusiastic youth, taking shape and color in a great measure from the dramatic literature on which his imagination had fed. As Schiller himself confessed, it was an attempt to portray men by one who had not the slightest knowledge of mankind. Its power and popularity, in spite of all defects, and the firm hold it still has of each rising generation, are due to the sincere spirit of revolt against social, political, and intellectual tyranny that permeates it, and is the sole source of its verity and vitality.

Not feeling himself safe from ducal catchpolls at Mannheim, Schiller went to Bauerbach near Meiningen, where he was hospitably received by Frau von Wolzogen, the mother of one of his schoolfellows; and remained for several months under the name of Dr. Ritter. In this friendly retreat and place of refuge he finished 'The Conspiracy of Fiesco,' brought in a rough draught from Stuttgart;

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