Friedrich Schiller
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller ( ; 10 November 17599 May 1805) was a German playwright, poet, and philosopher. During the last seventeen years of his life (1788–1805), Schiller developed a productive, if complicated, friendship with the already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. They frequently discussed issues concerning aesthetics, and Schiller encouraged Goethe to finish works that he had left as sketches. This relationship and these discussions led to a period now referred to as Weimar Classicism. They also worked together on "Xenien", a collection of short satirical poems in which both Schiller and Goethe challenge opponents of  their philosophical vision. Early life and career. Friedrich Schiller was born on 10 November 1759, in Marbach, Württemberg, as the only son of military doctor (1733–1796) and (1732–1802). They also had five daughters, including Christophine, the eldest. Schiller grew up in a very religious Protestant family and spent much of his youth studying the Bible, which would later influence his writing for the theatre. His father was away in the Seven Years' War when Friedrich was born. He was named after king Frederick the Great, but he was called Fritz by nearly everyone. Kaspar Schiller was rarely home during the  war, but he did manage to visit the family once in a while. His wife and children also visited him occasionally wherever he happened to be stationed. When the war ended in 1763, Schiller's father became a recruiting officer and was stationed in Schwäbisch Gmünd. The family moved with him. Due to the high cost of living—especially the rent—the family moved to the nearby town of Lorch. Although the family was happy in Lorch, Schiller's father found his work unsatisfying. He sometimes took his son with him. In Lorch, Schiller received his primary education. The quality  of the lessons was fairly bad, and Friedrich regularly cut class with his older sister. Because his parents wanted Schiller to become a priest, they had the priest of the village instruct the boy in Latin and Greek. Father Moser was a good teacher, and later Schiller named the cleric in his first play "Die Räuber" ("The Robbers") after him. As a boy, Schiller was excited by the idea of becoming a cleric and often put on black robes and pretended to preach. In 1766, the family left Lorch for the Duke of Württemberg's principal residence, Ludwigsburg. Schiller's  father had not been paid for three years, and the family had been living on their savings but could no longer afford to do so. So Kaspar Schiller took an assignment to the garrison in Ludwigsburg. There the boy Schiller came to the attention of Karl Eugen, Duke of Württemberg. He entered the Karlsschule Stuttgart (an elite military academy founded by the Duke), 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 Karlsschule, Schiller read Rousseau and Goethe and discussed Classical ideals with  his classmates. At school, he wrote his first play, "The Robbers", which dramatizes the conflict between two aristocratic brothers: the elder, Karl Moor, leads a group of rebellious students into the Bohemian forest where they become Robin Hood-like bandits, while Franz Moor, the younger brother, schemes to inherit his father's considerable estate. The play's critique of social corruption and its affirmation of proto-revolutionary republican ideals astounded its original audience. Schiller became an overnight sensation. Later, Schiller would be made an honorary member of the French Republic because of this play. The play was inspired by Leisewitz ' earlier play "Julius of Taranto", a favourite of the young Schiller. In 1780, he obtained a post as regimental doctor in Stuttgart, a job he disliked. In order to attend the first performance of "The Robbers" in Mannheim, Schiller left his regiment without permission. As a result, he was arrested, sentenced to 14 days of imprisonment, and forbidden by Karl Eugen from publishing any further works. He fled Stuttgart in 1782, going via Frankfurt, Mannheim, Leipzig, and Dresden to Weimar. Along this journey he had an affair with an army officer's wife, Charlotte von Kalb. She was at the  centre of an intellectual circle, and she was known for her cleverness and instability. Schiller needed help from his family and friends to extricate himself from his financial situation and attachment to a married woman. Schiller settled in Weimar in 1787. In 1789, he was appointed professor of History and Philosophy in Jena, where he wrote only historical works. Marriage and family. On 22 February 1790, Schiller married Charlotte von Lengefeld (1766–1826). Two sons (Karl Friedrich Ludwig and Ernst Friedrich Wilhelm) and two daughters (Karoline Luise Henriette and Luise Henriette Emilie) were born between 1793 and 1804. The last living  descendant of Schiller was a grandchild of Emilie, Baron Alexander von Gleichen-Rußwurm, who died at Baden-Baden, Germany, in 1947. Weimar and later career. Schiller returned with his family to Weimar from Jena in 1799. Goethe convinced him to return to playwriting. He and Goethe founded the Weimar Theater, which became the leading theater in Germany. Their collaboration helped lead to a renaissance of drama in Germany. For his achievements, Schiller was ennobled in 1802 by the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, adding the nobiliary particle "von" to his name. He remained in Weimar, Saxe-Weimar until his death at  45 from tuberculosis in 1805. Legacy and honors. The first authoritative biography of Schiller was by his sister-in-law Caroline von Wolzogen in 1830, "" (Schiller's Life). The coffin containing what was purportedly Schiller's skeleton was brought in 1827 into the Weimarer Fürstengruft (Weimar's Ducal Vault), the burial place of the house of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach in the Historical Cemetery of Weimar and later also Goethe's resting place. On 3 May 2008, scientists announced that DNA tests have shown that the skull of this skeleton is not Schiller's, and his tomb is now vacant. The  physical resemblance between this skull and the extant death mask as well as to portraits of Schiller, had led many experts to believe that the skull was Schiller's. The city of Stuttgart erected in 1839 a statue in his memory on a square renamed Schillerplatz. A Schiller monument was unveiled on Berlin's Gendarmenmarkt in 1871. The German-American community of New York City donated a bronze sculpture of Schiller to Central Park in 1859. It was Central Park's first installed sculpture. Schiller Park in Columbus, Ohio is named for Schiller, and has been centered on a statue  of his likeness since it was donated in 1891. During the First World War, the name of the park was changed to Washington Park in response to anti-German sentiment, but was changed back several years later. It is the primary park for the South Side neighborhood of German Village. There is a Friedrich Schiller statue on Belle Isle in Detroit, Michigan. This statue of the German playwright was commissioned by Detroit's German-American community in 1908 at a cost of $12,000; the designer was Herman Matzen. His image appeared on the German Democratic Republic 10 Mark banknotes  of the 1964 emission. In September 2008, Schiller was voted by the audience of the TV channel Arte as the second most important playwright in Europe after William Shakespeare. On 10 November 2019, Google celebrated his 260th birthday with a Google Doodle. Freemasonry. Some Freemasons speculate that Schiller was a Freemason, but this has not been proven. In 1787, in his tenth letter about "Don Carlos", Schiller wrote: In a letter from 1829, two Freemasons from Rudolstadt complain about the dissolving of their Lodge "Günther zum stehenden Löwen" that was honoured by the initiation of Schiller. According to Schiller's  great-grandson Alexander von Gleichen-Rußwurm, Schiller was brought to the Lodge by "Wilhelm Heinrich Karl von Gleichen-Rußwurm". No membership document has been found. Writing. Philosophical papers. Schiller wrote many philosophical papers on ethics and aesthetics. He synthesized the thought of Immanuel Kant with the thought of the German idealist philosopher, Karl Leonhard Reinhold. He elaborated upon Christoph Martin Wieland's concept of ' (the beautiful soul), a human being whose emotions have been educated by reason, so that ' (duty and inclination) are no longer in conflict with one another; thus beauty, for Schiller, is not merely an aesthetic experience , but a moral one as well: the Good is the Beautiful. The link between morality and aesthetics also occurs in Schiller's controversial poem, "Die Götter Griechenlandes" (The Gods of Greece). The "gods" in Schiller's poem are thought by modern scholars to represent moral and aesthetic values, which Schiller tied to Paganism and an idea of enchanted nature. In this respect, Schiller's aesthetic doctrine shows the influence of Christian theosophy. There is general consensus among scholars that it makes sense to think of Schiller as a liberal, and he is frequently cited as a cosmopolitan thinker. Schiller's  philosophical work was particularly concerned with the question of human freedom, a preoccupation which also guided his historical research, such as on the Thirty Years' War and the Dutch Revolt, 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 (""), entitled "" and ""; these essays address one aspect of human freedom—the ability to defy one's animal instincts, such as the drive for self-preservation, when, for example, someone willingly  sacrifices themselves for conceptual ideals. Plays. Schiller is considered by most Germans to be Germany's most important classical playwright. Critics like F. J. Lamport and Eric Auerbach have noted his innovative use of dramatic structure and his creation of new forms, such as the melodrama and the bourgeois tragedy. What follows is a brief chronological description of the plays. Section::::"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"), first published 1794, which was inspired by the great disenchantment  Schiller felt about the French Revolution, its degeneration into violence and the failure of successive governments to put its ideals into practice. Schiller wrote that "a great moment has found a little people"; he 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 "der sinnliche Trieb / Sinnestrieb" ("the sensuous drive") and "Formtrieb" ("the formal drive"). In a comment to Immanuel Kant's philosophy, Schiller transcends the dualism between "Formtrieb" and "Sinnestrieb" with the notion of "Spieltrieb" ("the play drive"), derived from, as are a number of other terms, Kant's "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 "Formtrieb" and "Sinnestrieb", 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" (a eutopia), 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 "Formtrieb" and "Sinnestrieb" has inspired a wide range of succeeding aesthetic philosophical theory, including notably Jacques Rancière's conception of the "aesthetic regime of art," as well as social philosophy in Herbert Marcuse. In the second part of his important work "Eros  and Civilization", Marcuse finds Schiller's notion of "Spieltrieb" useful in thinking a social situation without the condition of modern social alienation. He writes, "Schiller's "Letters" ... aim at remaking of civilization by virtue of the liberating force of the aesthetic function: it is envisaged as containing the possibility of a new reality principle." Musical settings. Ludwig van Beethoven said that a great poem is more difficult to set to music than a merely good one because the composer must rise higher than the poet – "who can do that in the case of Schiller? In this respect Goethe is much  easier," wrote Beethoven. There are relatively few famous musical settings of Schiller's poems. Notable exceptions are Beethoven's setting of "An die Freude" ("Ode to Joy") in the final movement of his Ninth Symphony, Johannes Brahms' choral setting of "Nänie" and "Des Mädchens Klage" by Franz Schubert, who set 44 of Schiller's poems as Lieder, mostly for voice and piano, also including "Die Bürgschaft". The Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi admired Schiller greatly and adapted several of his stage plays for his operas: Donizetti's "Maria Stuarda" is based on "Mary Stuart"; Rossini's "Guillaume Tell" is an adaptation  of "William Tell". Nicola Vaccai's "Giovanna d'Arco" (1827) is based on "The Maid of Orleans", and his "La sposa di Messina" (1839) on "The Bride of Messina". Tchaikovsky's 1881 opera "The Maid of Orleans" is partly based on Schiller's work. German-Russian composer Zinaida Petrovna Ziberova created a musical setting for Schiler's "William Tell" in 1935. The 20th-century composer Giselher Klebe adapted "The Robbers" for his first opera of the same name, which premiered in 1957. Schiller's burial. A poem written about the poet's burial: Works. Plays Histories Translations Prose Poems References. Sources  Further reading. Biographical Editions Other valuable editions are: Translations of Schiller's works: Documents and other memorials of Schiller are in the in Weimar.