Schiller After Two Centuries

Nicholas Martin Introduction: Schiller After Two Centuries* The third version of Goethe’s public lament for Schiller includes an emphatic wish that posterity should celebrate Schiller and thereby not only fill the void left by his untimely death but also in some sense complete his unfulfilled life: “So feiert ihn! Denn was dem Mann das Leben / Nur halb erteilt, soll ganz die Nachwelt geben”.1 The wish was granted, though had Goethe known precisely what posterity had in store for Schiller, he might perhaps have been more careful in what he wished for. Even before the onset of the physical afflictions that would eventually kill him, Schiller himself had commented in rather different terms on the nature of his fame. In a letter to a friend in 1789 he wrote: “Wenn mich je das Unglück oder Glück träfe, sehr berühmt zu werden […], so seyen Sie mit Ihrer Freundschaft gegen mich vorsichtiger. Lesen Sie alsdann meine Schriften, und lassen den Menschen übrigens laufen” (NA 25. 209).2 By 1789 Schiller was already very famous, of course, and his fame was to increase steadily until his death on 9 May 1805 at the age of forty-five. His posthumous fame – the “Schiller legend” in the various guises it has assumed over the past two hundred years – has dwarfed the fame he enjoyed during his relatively short life. It is the nature of this posthumous fame that Schiller appears to be hinting at in his remarks; for it is precisely in the elevation or mythologisation of the man at the expense of his writings that Schiller’s reputation has suffered much harm. Arguably, still more harm has been done over the years by the periodic emphasis on alleged political and national(ist) messages in Schiller’s writings to the near exclusion of reflections on his achievement as a dramatist and poet. The two-hundredth anniversary of Schiller’s death was an important cultural event yet it had to jostle for attention on a crowded stage, because 2005 was an * Schiller’s texts are quoted from Schillers Werke. Nationalausgabe. Ed. by Julius Petersen, Gerhard Fricke et al. Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachf. 1943ff. Quotations from Schiller’s verse plays are identified by line number, others by NA with volume and page numbers. 1 Johann Wolfgang Goethe: Epilog zu Schillers “Glocke” [1805/10/15]. In: Goethes Werke. Ed. by Erich Trunz. 14 vols. Munich: Beck 12th edn 1981. Vol. 1. Pp. 256–259. Lines 95–96. 2 To Caroline von Beulwitz. 25.2.1789. Schiller appears to have been in a particularly despondent and self-critical mood that day, writing to another friend, Christian Gottfried Körner: “[…] je mehr ich empfinde, wie viele und welche Talente oder Erfodernisse mir fehlten, so überzeuge ich mich desto lebhafter von der Realität und Stärke desjenigen Talents, welches, jenes Mangels ungeachtet, mich soweit gebracht hat, als ich schon bin” (NA 25. 212). 8 unusually busy year for round anniversaries. It saw the one-hundredth birthdays of Jean-Paul Sartre, Elias Canetti and Anthony Powell, the centenary of the publication of Einstein’s special theory of relativity, and the quatercentenary of the publication of the first part of Don Quijote. 12 August 2005 was the fiftieth anniversary of Thomas Mann’s death, and the 150th anniversary of Kierkegaard’s death was also commemorated in 2005. However, it was the bicentenaries which seemed the most numerous. In addition to Schiller’s twohundredth “Todestag”, 2005 saw Hans Christian Andersen’s two-hundredth birthday, as well as the bicentenaries of the battles of Trafalgar (21 October) and Austerlitz (2 December), and of the first performance of Beethoven’s Fidelio (20 November). Anniversaries of Schiller’s birth or death have usually been celebrated at fifty-year intervals.3 The “Schillerjahr 2005” was the seventh of these, after 1855, 1859, 1905, 1909, 1955 and 1959. In May 2005, the Austrian public television channel Ö1 attempted to explain to its audience the significance of the Schiller anniversary: “Jedes Jubiläum – ein runder Geburtstag oder Todestag – wurde schon immer zum Anlass genommen, die jeweils aktuelle Sicht auf Person oder Werk eines Künstlers in Publikationen aller Art zu verbreiten. Jetzt ist Friedrich Schiller dran”.4 This is quite correct, of course, but tells only half the story. As important as the views expressed on Schiller is what these views tell us about the individuals and cultures expressing them. The major “Schillerfeiern” of the past two hundred years offer not only a picture of the vicissitudes of the poet’s fame but also revealing snapshots of German intellectual, political and popular culture. In the context of the present volume, it seems appropriate to provide a brief sketch of Schiller’s reception as seen through the prism of these formal celebrations and commemorations. The high tides in Schiller’s reputation since his death have occurred during the Wars of Liberation of 1813–14, the ensuing period up to and including the 1848 revolutions, and the anniversaries of 1859 and 1905. Periods during which Schiller has tended to be out of favour include the years immediately following his death (1805–12), the “Gründerjahre” of the Wilhelmine Reich, the disillusioned anniversary of 1909, the First World War, as well as much of the second half of the twentieth century.5 For better or worse, the Schiller we know today is still to some extent the product of the 1859 centenary celebrations which set the tone for both the form and the rhetorical content of many 3 A glaring exception to this rule was 1934, when the Nazis thought it politically expedient to celebrate Schiller’s 175th birthday. 4 Anschreiben gegen Klischees. Friedrich Schiller zum 200. Todestag. ⬍http:// oe1.orf. at/highlights/36500.html⬎. 5 An authoritative guide to the history of Schiller reception in Germany is Schiller – Zeitgenosse aller Epochen. Dokumente zur Wirkungsgeschichte Schillers in Deutschland. Ed. by Norbert Oellers. 2 vols. Frankfurt/M.: Athenäum 1970. Munich: Beck 1976. 9 events in subsequent “Schillerjahre”. In 1859 countless “Festredner” became unsolicited marketing men for a certain idea of Schiller. This idea had three aspects: Schiller the spiritual and, above all, political idealist; Schiller the moralist; and Schiller the patriot. Schiller’s humane cosmopolitanism was largely ignored and this was to remain a feature of “Schillerjahre” until the 1950s. Looking back, one commentator in 1959 observed: “Weil gewisse Richtungen den Kosmopoliten nicht wollten, feierte man den nationalen Dichter der Deutschen in Schiller”.6 Much of the rhetoric surrounding the extraordinary celebrations of 1859, which tended to identify Schiller with not only a spirit of national unity but also a particular self-image of the German “Bürgertum”, helped to shape the image of Schiller as an idealised and politically malleable figure. The Austrian writer Franz Grillparzer was one of very few at the time to recognise the dangers of this approach: “Meine Herren! Lassen Sie uns Schiller feiern als das, was er war: als großen Dichter, als ausgezeichneten Schriftsteller und ihn nicht bloß zum Vorwand nehmen für weiß Gott was für politische und staatliche Ideen”.7 By the time of the next major “Schillerjahr”, the centenary of his death in 1905, a change in attitudes appeared to have taken place. In the years leading up to the centenary, two impressive editions were published: Fritz Jonas’s critical edition of Schiller’s letters, which appeared between 1892 and 1896 and, on the eve of the centenary, Eduard von der Hellen’s sixteen-volume “Säkularausgabe” of Schiller’s works.8 Monumental scholarly achievements though both editions are, they reveal that by 1905 Schiller had become more of an object of academic study than of popular enthusiasm or literary engagement, though the “patriotic” Schiller was still very much in evidence. In the words of Hans Mayer: Das Schiller-Jahr 1905 stand weitgehend im Zeichen offizieller Feiern des wilhelminischen Deutschland. Die literarischen Naturalisten und Impressionisten hielten sich zurück. […] Die Schiller-Feier von 1905 stand nach außen hin im Zeichen der Behörden und der Universitätsprofessoren für neuere deutsche Philologie, nicht der Schriftsteller.9 6 Rudolf Hagelstange: Friedrich Schiller und die Deutschen. In: Schiller. Reden im Gedenkjahr 1959. Ed. by Bernhard Zeller. Stuttgart: Klett 1961 (Veröffentlichungen der Deutschen Schillergesellschaft 24). Pp. 53–75, here p. 74. 7 Franz Grillparzer: Sämtliche Werke. Ed. by Moritz Necker. 16 vols. Leipzig: Hesse 1903. Vol. 14. Pp. 79–80. 8 Schillers Briefe. Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Ed. by Fritz Jonas. 7 vols. Stuttgart – Leipzig – Berlin – Vienna: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt 1892–96. Schillers Sämtliche Werke. Säkular-Ausgabe. Ed. by Eduard von der Hellen. 16 vols. Stuttgart – Berlin: Cotta 1904–05. 9 Hans Mayer: Schillers Nachruhm. In: Etudes Germaniques 14 (1959). Pp. 374–385, here p. 383. 10 Apart from an influential contingent of “Gymnasiallehrer”, few in 1905 still clung to the idealised image of “unser Schiller”, which had characterised the 1859 celebrations. One of the more enduring tributes to Schiller in 1905 was paid by Thomas Mann in his novella Schwere Stunde.10 It is an imaginative reconstruction of Schiller working alone at night, wrestling with the conception and execution of his Wallenstein, racked by self-doubt as well as jealousy of his friend and rival Goethe, and struggling with poor health. Schwere Stunde is a celebration of heroism, but it is emphatically not the sentimental, pathosridden heroism hailed by those “Schiller-Festredner” who are detached from, and largely out of sympathy with, their subject. Mann identifies strongly with the Schiller he has created, with the struggling artist and suffering human being. Mann’s novella celebrates the heroism born of weakness and adversity. This, together with his sympathetic description of the process of suffering, placed Schwere Stunde at several removes from the twin Schiller cults of patriotic adulation and sentimental reverence. In general, however, Schiller had become a more controversial figure by 1905, whose spirit appeared to some to be out of place in the “new Germany” which had taken shape since 1871: “[After 1871] Schiller was no longer the man of the hour […]. The kingdom of the Germans was no longer a kingdom of the air; Schiller the cosmopolitan enthusiast of the eighteenth century was but indifferently adapted to be the representative poet of the real German Empire”.11 Schiller had also acquired a number of influential enemies. Chief among them was Nietzsche, who in his youth held Schiller in high esteem only to turn on him no less savagely than he did on his erstwhile father-figure Wagner. Mischievously running together a view of Schiller as an insistent moraliser and the title of a popular nineteenth-century poem, Nietzsche brutally characterised Schiller as “der Moral-Trompeter von Säckingen”.12 This striking epithet was in fact more of an attack on Schiller’s nineteenth-century admirers than on the poet himself.13 Another powerful antagonist was the Goethe scholar Erich Schmidt whose 1905 “Festrede” at Berlin made no secret 10 Schwere Stunde was first published in Simplicissimus on 9 May 1905, exactly one hundred years after Schiller’s death. 11 John G. Robertson: Schiller After A Century. Edinburgh – London: Blackwood 1905. P. 18. 12 Friedrich Nietzsche: Götzen-Dämmerung [1888]. Streifzüge eines Unzeitgemässen 1. In: Nietzsche. Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Ed. by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter 1967ff. Vol. VI/3. P. 105. Nietzsche was alluding to the title of an epic poem by Scheffel. Joseph Viktor von Scheffel. Der Trompeter von Säkkingen. Ein Sang vom Oberrhein. Stuttgart: Metzler 1854. 13 “Nietzsches Diatriben gegen Schiller meinten im Grunde weniger den Dichter und sein Werk, als dieses Olympiertum im Zeichen von Kaiser und Reich”. Mayer (n. 9). P. 383. For further discussion, see my Nietzsche and Schiller: Untimely Aesthetics. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1996. Pp. 45–52. 11 of his, and others’, belief that Goethe was a greater figure than Schiller; Schmidt pointedly framed his Schiller speech with paeans to Goethe.14 Other enemies included many Naturalists and some Social Democrats, in whose eyes celebrations of Schiller appeared to embody and perpetuate Germany’s enduring political backwardness. Conversely, the way in which Schiller was taught and idolised within the school curriculum – one commentator has termed this process “die Verspießerung des Dichters”15 – reflected, many believed, the worst kind of reactionary bourgeois complacency of the early twentieth century, remote not only from the world of politics and action but also from the radical essence of Schiller’s character. There was also no place for Schiller in Wilhelm Dilthey’s influential work Das Erlebnis und die Dichtung of 1906.16 Dilthey’s models, who allegedly combined lived experience with lived writing, were instead Lessing, Goethe, Novalis and Hölderlin. And in 1910 Eugen Dühring voiced disapproval of Schiller in cruder terms, when he articulated a widely held sense that Schiller was little more than a “Schieler und Schillerer”, a “schulphil[o]sophirerischer Rauschlyriker”.17 During the 1909 “Schillerjahr” some voices were more critical still; one satirist was especially scathing, though his accurate sniping was directed more at the stultifying rituals of the “Schillerfeier” than at the man himself or his works: Man weiß seit dem Jahre 1859, wie sie zu verlaufen pflegt. Ein deutscher Professor hält die Festrede und schwelgt in Lobpreisungen des Idealismus; einige Schauspieler tragen Schillersche Balladen vor (“die Kraniche des Ibykus” müssen stets herhalten), und ein Gesangsverein singt die “Vertonung” irgend eines Schillerschen Textes. Das Publikum aber, das sich aus den besten Kreisen der Gesellschaft zusammensetzt, tut so, als wär’ es begeistert, während es sich langweilt. So war es, so ist es, so wird es sein bis ans Ende der Tage. “Gott! Schütze mich vor meinen Freunden!” würde der große Marbacher ausrufen, wenn er heute noch unter uns weilte. […] Man sieht daraus, Schillern geht es genau so wie dem lieben Gott. Ein jeder beruft sich auf ihn, wenn er sein Schäfchen ins Trockne bringen will.18 The celebrations orchestrated by the Nazis in 1934 for the 175th anniversary of Schiller’s birth, which are discussed in more detail elsewhere in this volume, were arguably the shabbiest in a long history of not always distinguished treatments of the poet. 14 See Erich Schmidt: Rede bei der Schiller-Feier der Königlichen Friedrich-WilhelmsUniversität zu Berlin am 9. Mai 1905. Berlin: Schade 1905. 15 See Claudia Albert: Schiller im 20. Jahrhundert. In: Schiller-Handbuch. Ed. by Helmut Koopmann. Stuttgart: Kröner 1998. Pp. 773–794, here p. 774. 16 Wilhelm Dilthey: Das Erlebnis und die Dichtung. Lessing, Goethe, Novalis, Hölderlin. Vier Aufsätze. Leipzig: Teubner 1906. 17 Qtd. in Oellers (n. 5). Vol. 2. P. 32. See also Albert (n. 15). P. 774. 18 Tarub: Die Schillerfeier. März 3 (1909). No. 4. Pp. 310–311. 12 The first post-war Schiller celebrations, in 1955 and 1959 respectively, were to some extent influenced by the Cold War. To mark Schiller’s 150th “Todestag” in 1955, important collections of speeches and essays were published in both East and West Germany, with a degree of overlap and co-operation between them.19 While both volumes contain, for the most part, scholarly essays which focus on Schiller’s poetic achievement rather than his contemporary political relevance, the division of Germany is never far away. The preface to the West German volume declares that the volume needs no justification, refers to “unser so unnatürlich gespaltenes Vaterland”, and invokes Schiller as, in the words of Carl J. Burckhardt, “einer unserer großen ‘Nothelfer’ ”.20 Theodor Heuss, who in 1955 was in his second term of office as the first President of the Federal Republic, shied away from direct political use of Schiller: “Ich enttäusche jene gerne, die meinen, weil ich gegenwärtig Bundespräsident bin, sei es meine Aufgabe, aus Schiller eine staatsaktuelle Werbeaktion zu machen. Dafür ist er mir zu groß, dafür bin ich mir zu gut”.21 Heuss did, however, point out that the date of his speech, 8 May 1955, was not only the eve of a significant Schiller anniversary, it was also the tenth anniversary of the defeat of Hitler’s Germany: Es wäre unredlich, dieser Assoziation der Gedanken und Gefühle auszuweichen: […] der Tag [der 8. Mai 1945] mit seiner schmerzhaft tragischen Paradoxie, da unser Staaten- und Volksschicksal vernichtet, unsere Seele aber befreit war, freilich mit dem Auftrag, nun auch mit der Last der Scham fertig zu werden. Man möge das nicht als eine Erfindung des Hinterher nehmen – an diesem Tag, heute vor zehn Jahren, gingen immer wieder, Trost, Mahnung, Sicherung, drei Zeilen Schillers durch den Sinn: “Stürzte auch in Kriegesflammen / Deutsches Kaiserreich zusammen – / Deutsche Größe bleibt bestehen”.22 In his Schiller address of May 1955, Thomas Mann made only passing reference to the division of Germany but, considering that he gave his speech on both sides of the German-German border (first in Stuttgart and then in Weimar), it was a powerful one. Recalling the great celebrations of 1859, Mann observed: “Es war ein nationales Fest, und das sei das unsrige auch. Entgegen politischer Unnatur fühle das zweigeteilte Deutschland sich eins in seinem Namen”.23 19 Schiller. Reden im Gedenkjahr 1955. Ed. by Bernhard Zeller. Stuttgart: Klett 1955 (Veröffentlichungen der Deutschen Schillergesellschaft 21). Schiller in unserer Zeit. Beiträge zum Schillerjahr 1955. Ed. by Schiller-Komitee 1955. Weimar: Volksverlag 1955. The contributions by Thomas Mann (later published in revised form as “Versuch über Schiller”), Hans Mayer and Joachim Müller appeared in both volumes. 20 Der Vorstand der Deutschen Schillergesellschaft: Zum Geleit. In: Zeller (n. 19). Pp. 7–8. 21 Theodor Heuss: Schiller. In: Zeller (n. 19). Pp. 79–89, here p. 82. 22 Ibid. Pp. 87–88. 23 Thomas Mann: Versuch über Schiller. In: Gesammelte Werke. 13 vols. Frankfurt/M.: Fischer 1974. Vol. 9. Pp. 870–951, here p. 950. 13 The East German Schiller volume of 1955 is, on the whole, as sober and scholarly as its West German counterpart. However, the political statements it contains are more overt. Invoking the title of the GDR national anthem (for which he himself wrote the words), the GDR’s first Minister of Culture, Johannes R. Becher, opened his speech with the words: “Das erste Mal in der Geschichte unseres Volkes ist ‘auferstanden aus Ruinen’ ein deutscher Staat, der die Grundlage geschaffen hat, um Schillers Vermächtnis zu erfüllen”.24 Becher’s address is rooted firmly in the (bourgeois) tradition of Schiller veneration but his appeal to the poet as a unifying figure is very much in line with the official GDR vision of national unity: Friedrich Schiller ist unser, weil er unsere Jugend, weil er unsere Heimat ist; Friedrich Schiller bleibt unser, weil er unser Volk ist, weil er an das Beste rührt, was unser Volk hervorzubringen vermochte; Friedrich Schiller ist unser, weil er unser ganzes Deutschland, unsere freie, wiedervereinigte deutsche Nation ist. Er ist und bleibt unser, Friedrich Schiller, einer der größten Erzieher unserer Nation zum Patriotismus und Humanismus.25 The Schiller anniversary of 2005 went largely unremarked outside the Germanspeaking world. In Britain it barely registered. Schiller’s “death day” on 9 May 2005 fell the day after the sixtieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe, but this was not the main reason for the lack of attention paid to it. A far more likely explanation was given a century ago by the British Germanist J. G. Robertson: Outside Germany […] Schiller is regarded with what might be termed objective indifference, and there would seem to be no obstacles to an unbiased judgment of his work, say, in France or England. […] In Germany, on the other hand, there can be no question of indifference: by many of his countrymen Schiller is extolled as the representative national poet, while others, again, regard him with antipathy, and even animosity.26 During the interval of a performance of Verdi’s Don Carlo in 2005, BBC Radio Three broadcast an appreciation of Schiller. Robertson’s point about indifference was borne out when Radio Three was asked if the talk could be made available on its website and replied that there was insufficient interest to justify doing this. Robertson’s reservations notwithstanding, a century ago Schiller was an important cultural reference point throughout Europe, including Britain. Today, however, even well-educated Britons are unlikely to know much of his output in any of the fields – history, poetry, drama and philosophy – in which he excelled. The 24 Johannes R. Becher: “Denn er ist unser”: Friedrich Schiller der Dichter der Freiheit. In: Schiller-Komitee 1955 (n. 19). Pp. 43–58, here p. 43. 25 Ibid. P. 58. 26 Robertson (n. 11). P. 4. 14 one thing that a lot of people are likely to know about Schiller is that he wrote the Ode to Joy, which Beethoven set in the last movement of his ninth symphony and which since 1985 has been the European “national anthem”. There were two significant exceptions in 2005 to the rule that the Englishspeaking world tends to ignore Schiller. A highly successful revival of Don Carlos was produced at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield at the end of 2004. With Derek Jacobi as an impressively anguished Philip II, it transferred to the Gielgud Theatre in London for three months in early 2005. The director, Michael Grandage, successfully recreated the oppressive, claustrophobic atmosphere of the sixteenth-century Spanish court, a gilded cage in which the most powerful man in the world is a prisoner of his own tyranny. Critics were impressed, admitting that this production forced them to revise their hitherto rather negative opinion of Schiller. Michael Billington in The Guardian began his review by asking, “Who would have thought it – Schiller in Shaftesbury Avenue?”, before paying tribute to the “brilliance” of the production and concluding: “The evening is a triumph that at last puts Schiller centre stage”.27 The theatre critic of The Daily Telegraph was, if anything, even more effusive. He, too, admitted to having held a dim view of Schiller before seeing this production: “In the past, I have struggled to understand why […] Schiller is so revered. I’ve yawned through Maria Stuart, nodded off in Wallenstein and almost erased the memory of an earlier Don Carlos”. This production made him see both the play and Schiller in a new light. He describes Schiller’s tragedy as an entertaining “classic, a work which combines the personal and the political in a manner that can truly be described as Shakespearean” and which strikes “powerful contemporary chords. […] This is an absolutely spellbinding production of a masterpiece”.28 Michael Grandage was also (as artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse in London) behind the second, even more successful Schiller revival of 2005, namely, Phyllida Lloyd’s production of Mary Stuart, with Janet McTeer as the title character and Harriet Walter as Elizabeth. Mary Stuart was a sell-out at the Donmar from July to September 2005. As this volume was going to press, the production had transferred to the Apollo Theatre in the West End for a three-month run from 19 October 2005. The critics were once again enthusiastic – and slightly surprised. The Telegraph declared that “[Lloyd’s] gripping production […] exudes a sense of hurtling urgency and all-pervading danger” and saluted Grandage’s second “unlikely Teutonic triumph”,29 while the drama critic of 27 Michael Billington: Don Carlos. In: The Guardian. 4.2.2005. Charles Spencer: Spellbinding clash with the dark forces of terror. In: The Daily Telegraph. 4.10.2004. 29 Dominic Cavendish: Cutting to the heart of a deadly rivalry. In: The Daily Telegraph. 22.7.05. See also John Mullan: Downfall in a downpour. In: Times Literary Supplement. 12.8.05. 28 15 The Times was so overcome that the final sentence of his review suffered a syntactical breakdown: “Terrific acting, terrific theatre, terrific Schiller”.30 The success of these productions is all the more remarkable because, until 2005, Schiller was widely regarded in the London theatre world as box-office poison.31 Unsurprisingly, Germany was the setting for the vast majority of Schiller commemorations in 2005.32 While it is difficult to draw general conclusions from the vast array of Schiller-related events which took place, three interconnected trends were detectable. The first was that, for the first time in a century and a half, celebrations of Schiller’s life and work appeared to be largely free of political appropriations or interference. This may have been due in part to Germany’s return to a position of relative “normality” in the community of nations. Secondly, efforts were made to strip away traditional, idealised images of Schiller by stressing his all too human financial worries, his tangled love life and his battles against ill-health. Finally, determined attempts were made to make Schiller more accessible. In the introduction to the catalogue of the 2005 anniversary exhibition in Marbach, the curators declare, “Schiller [ist] mitnichten der große, weltfremde Geist, das rein-genialische Individuum, zu dem ihn die Mit- und Nachwelt gemacht hat”,33 only to concede that the search for the “real” Schiller behind the images of him created by posterity will always remain fruitless: “Am Ende bleibt das berühmte Individuum ein Rätsel. Wo liegt die Grenze zwischen authentischer Person und literarisch vermittelter, stilisierter Individualität?”34 The question of his contemporary relevance is invariably raised during Schiller anniversary years. In 1905 the eminent Schiller scholar Albert Ludwig hoped that the centenary celebrations of that year would help to ward off malicious assaults on Schiller’s reputation and establish his “Stellung zur Gegenwart. Kann er uns noch etwas sein?”35 A rather predictable view today is the one advanced by Johannes Lehmann in his “disrespectful approach” to Schiller: “Man ehrt ihn, aber man liest ihn nicht, man hält ihn hoch, aber im Bücherschrank 30 Benedict Nightingale: Sisterly sweetness is crushed in Schiller’s terrific drama. In: The Times. 21.7.05. 31 See Philip Oltermann: Thrillers from Schiller. In: The Times. 2.7.2005. Michael Billington: The German Shakespeare. In: The Guardian. 29.1.2005. 32 For details of some of the events held to mark the 2005 “Schillerjahr”, see the Appendix to this volume. 33 Frank Druffner and Martin Schalhorn: Götterpläne & Mäusegeschäfte. Schiller 1759–1805. Marbach am Neckar: Deutsche Schillergesellschaft 2005 (Marbacher Kataloge 58). P. 8. 34 Ibid. P. 9. 35 Albert Ludwig: Das Urteil über Schiller im neunzehnten Jahrhundert. Eine Revision seines Prozesses. Bonn: Cohen 1905. P. 107. This work became the basis of a monumental study published four years later, during the next “Schillerjahr”. Albert Ludwig: Schiller und die deutsche Nachwelt. Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung 1909. 16 fest verschlossen, ein klassisches Klassikerschicksal”.36 On its website devoted to the “Schillerjahr 2005”, the television channel 3sat posted a similar statement which resembled an examination question: “Schillers Werke verstauben in den Regalen, man versteht seine Sprache nicht und seine Themen scheinen mit der heutigen Zeit nichts mehr zu tun zu haben”.37 There is, of course, some truth in this view. Classic literary texts like Schiller’s are undoubtedly less central to people’s everyday cultural awareness than they perhaps once were. Ironically, the view that Schiller is remote and irrelevant was given fresh prominence in 2005 by academics and journalists eager to stress how redundant this attitude has become. The origin of this view is more difficult to trace. Schiller appears to have anticipated to a certain degree the excruciating idealisation to which his work and, more especially, character would later be subjected. In a letter to Körner of 1802, he suggests that Germans have an unfortunate tendency to place great works of literature (and their authors) on a quasi-religious pedestal: “Es ist […] im Character der Deutschen, daß ihnen alles gleich fest wird. […] Deßwegen gereichen ihnen selbst trefliche Werke zum Verderben, weil sie gleich für heilig und ewig erklärt werden” (NA 31. 90). Perhaps Goethe is partly to blame for the widespread view that Schiller is a remote, ethereal figure. Thomas Mann certainly thought so. Towards the end of his Schiller “Festrede” in 1955, Mann cited Goethe’s reaction when his daughter-in-law complained that she found Schiller’s works rather tedious. In an attempt to defend Schiller, the elderly Goethe apparently replied, “Ihr seid alle viel zu armselig und irdisch für ihn”.38 Mann, who had re-read all of Schiller’s works and letters in preparation for his ceremonial address, argued that Goethe’s dictum was well-meant but flawed: Wir sollten uns alle fürchten vor dieser Gebärde, diesem strafenden Wort des alten Goethe und zusehen, daß wir uns nicht als allzu irdisch-armselig erweisen vor ihm […]. Denn daß [Schillers] Andenken erlöschen dürfe, daß er unzeitgemäß geworden sei, uns nichts mehr zu sagen habe, ist Vorurteil und Wahn. Es ist eine Meinung von gestern, sie ist veraltet. Wie stark, bei neu durcharbeitender Beschäftigung mit seinem Werk, habe ich das empfunden – und daß er, der Herr seiner Krankheit, unserer kranken Zeit zum Seelenarzt werden könnte, wenn sie sich recht auf ihn besänne!39 The teaching methods of the proverbial “Oberlehrer” have been sharply criticised over the years, for allegedly helping to create a sense that Schiller and all 36 Johannes Lehmann: Unser armer Schiller. Eine respektlose Annäherung. Tübingen: Silberburg 2000. P. 296. 37 Schiller heute – Revolutionär und Genie. Diskussion am 3sat-Stand. ⬍http://www. 3sat.de/3sat.php?http://www.3sat.de/kulturzeit/specials/77228/⬎. 3sat is a satellite channel, jointly owned by ZDF, ORF and the Schweizerische Radio- und Fernsehgesellschaft. 38 Qtd. in Mann (n. 23). P. 946. 39 Mann (n. 23). P. 946. 17 his works are dull and boring. In that essay of 1905, written for the centenary of Schiller’s death, Robertson laid the blame for the distorted contemporary image of Schiller in Germany squarely at the door of her pedagogues. He declared that “even before the Centenary of 1859, Schiller was adopted by the German schoolmaster as a means of instilling moral principles, self-denial, and patriotism into the minds of his pupils”.40 Robertson also noted that there was one hindrance to the German people arriving even yet at a final judgment of Schiller’s position in the national literature, and that is the tradition kept alive in the German school. […] [A]t the Centenary of 1859, Schiller was brought forward as an educational factor – perhaps the greatest misfortune that can befall a poet. […] The schoolman shows himself, for the most part, incapable of discriminating between what in Schiller is poetry and what is merely rhetoric, […] or of understanding the movement of human ideas from the unnational humanitarianism of Schiller’s epoch to the nationalism of Bismarck’s. It is not to be wondered at that, as soon as a young man escapes from the trammels of the gymnasium [sic] and begins to think and read for himself, his first impulse is to become what Otto Brahm called a “Schiller hater”.41 Fifty years later, in 1955, Gerhard Fricke also pointed the finger at the way Schiller was taught to young people: Für Generationen heranwachsender Menschen, die bereits von völlig anderen Erfahrungen und Problemen bewegt waren, wurde dieser Schul-Schiller zu einer Art abgesunkenem Kulturgut, dessen Sentenzen, Charaktere und Grundgedanken in jenen moralisierenden und klassifizierenden Vereinfachungen, wie sie im Unterricht kaum vermeidbar sind, bis zum Überdruss zerredet und zerschrieben wurden. Das Ergebnis war häufig, dass diese Jugend, Generation um Generation, wenn sie die Schule verliess, auch mit ihrem Schiller fertig war.42 It is unlikely that this deadening, schoolmasterly approach to Schiller persists today. As a rule, schoolboys and schoolgirls in Germany are no longer exposed, at too young an age, to Schiller’s ballads or his blank verse and they are therefore unlikely to cower at the mention of the name Schiller in the way that many British schoolchildren recoil from the mention of Shakespeare. George Orwell observed that the process of force-feeding “great authors” to schoolchildren “causes rebellion and vomiting, but it may have different effects in later life”.43 40 Robertson (n. 11). Pp. 8–9. Ibid. Pp. 19–20. 42 Gerhard Fricke: Schiller. Rede zum 150. Todestag des Dichters. In: Alman dil ve Edibiyati Dergisi. Ed by Gerhard Fricke and Burhanettin Batiman. Istanbul: University of Istanbul 1955. Pp. 1–14, here p. 2. 43 George Orwell: Charles Dickens. In: Critical Essays. London: Secker and Warburg 1946. Pp. 7–56, here p. 44. 41 18 It seems unlikely that there is much rebelling against Schiller in German schools today because, apart from having to read Kabale und Liebe and possibly some extracts from Wilhelm Tell, most German school pupils are not exposed to Schiller to the extent, or in the manner, that previous generations often were. Whatever the situation in German schools, to judge by the vast and bewildering range of cultural events linked to the 2005 anniversary, Schiller appeared to be alive and well (as it were) elsewhere in the German-speaking world. There were many traditional forms of celebration or commemoration, including “Festakte”, conferences, poetry readings, concerts and exhibitions. There were also many new and revived productions of Schiller’s dramas. Kabale und Liebe (and Verdi’s Don Carlo) were performed in Weimar, Wilhelm Tell in Mannheim, and in Meiningen there were performances of Don Carlos as well as the world premiere of a dramatised version of Der Geisterseher. There was also extensive coverage of the anniversary of the “Todestag” on German television and radio, with Schiller feature films (new and old), documentaries and round-table discussions. And the television channel 3sat broadcast a different Schiller play each month between May and October 2005. The titles of some of the events linked to the 2005 “Schillerjahr” were quite striking. For example, there was the whole series of cultural events in Jena (“Jena schillert”), Schiller street theatre performed by children in Weimar (“Schiller auf der Straße”), the “Schillernder Maimarkt” in Mannheim, the exhibition at Schiller’s “Geburtshaus” in Marbach on “Der Schiller-Comic”, a theatre evening in Weimar in January 2005, entitled “War Schiller sexy?”, and the “Schiller unplugged” evening at the Theater hinterm Eisernen in Leipzig in May, which depicted Schiller “als junger Wilder”. Last but not least, a radio play on Schiller’s relationship with Goethe was broadcast on SWR2 on 12 May, with the title “Schöne Schädeley”. Opinions naturally differ over whether such phenomena are signs of vibrant life, of enduring and innovative engagement with Schiller, or whether they are ephemeral and opportunistic attempts to breathe life back into a cultural corpse. Whatever one’s view of the nature of some of these Schiller events, the absence of them would be far worse. It is refreshing to see how in 2005 Schiller was at last unplugged from political currents of the kind that had run through almost all previous “Schillerjahre”. He was discovered by new audiences during 2005, many of whom appeared to like what they saw. It is impossible to know what Thomas Mann would have thought of “War Schiller sexy?”, for example, but that fear he expressed in 1955, shortly before his own death, that interest in Schiller was in terminal decline shows few signs of being realised. Some twenty-five years earlier Mann had been asked by a newspaper in Königsberg to answer the question, “Ist Schiller noch lebendig?” After observing that only a German could ask such a question (it would never occur to a Frenchman, he says, to ask if Corneille or Racine were still important figures), Mann’s reply was succinct: “Zu fragen, ob Schiller noch lebt, deutet auf 19 Mangel an Selbstbewußtsein; es ist nicht viel anders, als fragten wir, ob wir ein Kulturvolk sind. Man müßte sehr bitter gelaunt sein, um Nein zu sagen”.44 Vigorous signs of life could also be detected in the publishing marketplace in 2005, where a huge number of Schiller-related publications emerged to coincide with the anniversary. Some were entirely new, while others were reissued or revised. One of the more significant was a new edition of the fivevolume “Hanserausgabe”, originally edited by Gerhard Fricke and Herbert Göpfert and first published in 1958. It has been revised by three new editors (Peter-André Alt, Albert Meier and Wolfgang Riedel) and includes some new material as well as a wholly revised commentary.45 New biographies of Schiller included those by Alt, Rüdiger Safranski and Sigrid Damm, and a new study of Schiller’s work by Norbert Oellers also appeared.46 To advertise its Schiller offerings in 2005, the publishing house Hanser produced a glossy brochure. The first ten pages of the brochure, which bore the slightly alarming title “Schiller kommt”, were devoted to announcing scholarly publications. On the next page, however, there was an advertisement for elegant, Schiller-themed pralines, as well as for a bust of Schiller, hand-sculpted from the finest chocolate. Goethe and Schiller salt and pepper shakers were also on offer for 12.50 Euros: Schiller was the salt, Goethe the pepper. This kind of marketing is admittedly mild in comparison to the commercial exploitation of Schiller memorabilia in the nineteenth century but it nevertheless recalls Alexia’s words in Demetrius: “Was doch der Mensch nicht wagt für den Gewinn” (line 924). A number of poetry anthologies were also published, or republished, particularly by Insel-Suhrkamp. These anthologies had a largely traditional format, and in some cases traditional titles reminiscent of nineteenth-century “SchillerAndacht”, such as Die seligen Augenblicke or Schöne Welt, wo bist du?47 Some Schiller anthologies for children were also published, notably Peter Härtling’s selection “und mich – mich ruft das Flügeltier”.48 There was an entertaining 44 Thomas Mann: Ist Schiller noch lebendig? In: Gesammelte Werke. 13 vols. Frankfurt/M.: Fischer 1974. Vol. 10. Pp. 909–910, here p. 909. 45 Friedrich Schiller: Sämtliche Werke. Neuausgabe. Ed. by Peter-André Alt, Albert Meier and Wolfgang Riedel. 5 vols. Munich: Hanser/dtv 2004. 46 Peter-André Alt: Schiller. Leben – Werk – Zeit. Eine Biographie. 2 vols. Munich: Beck 2nd edn 2004. Rüdiger Safranski: Friedrich Schiller oder Die Erfindung des deutschen Idealismus. Munich: Hanser 2004. Sigrid Damm: Das Leben des Friedrich Schiller. Eine Wanderung. Frankfurt/M.: Insel 2004. Norbert Oellers: Schiller. Elend der Geschichte, Glanz der Kunst. Stuttgart – Weimar: Metzler 2005. 47 Friedrich von Schiller: Die seligen Augenblicke. Ed. by Sigrid Damm. Frankfurt/M.: Insel 2005. Friedrich Schiller: Schöne Welt, wo bist du? Ed. by Thomas Rosenlöcher. Frankfurt/M.: Insel 2005. 48 Peter Härtling: “und mich – mich ruft das Flügeltier”. Schiller für Kinder. Frankfurt/M.: Insel 2004. 20 analysis of the question of Schiller for children in an article in the magazine Stern.49 Competition for the most improbably named Schiller publication, re-publication, article or event of 2005 was stiff, but the title of another anthology, also from Suhrkamp, seemed hard to beat: Schiller für Gestreßte.50 Albert Ludwig concluded his 1905 survey of attitudes to Schiller in confident mood: “die Feste, die wir [Schillern] feiern werden, mögen verrauschen, aber wir werden gewiß sein dürfen, daß an die Stelle einer Hochflut nicht wieder eine Ebbe tritt”.51 A century later, George Steiner was less optimistic. In his “Festrede” in April 2005 to open the bicentennial exhibition at the Schiller-Nationalmuseum in Marbach, Steiner argued that our distrust of rhetorical eloquence and of most forms of optimism meant that Schiller was destined to remain much feted but little read. Somewhat gloomily, he asked his audience a rhetorical question: “Wird es 2055 in Marbach eine Schiller-Feier geben oder, bestenfalls, ein Kolloquium von Hochschulspezialisten?”.52 This view seems unwarranted. The worst that could be said of the 2005 Schiller commemorations is that they were too numerous. Overkill was part of the reason why Erich Kästner and others recoiled from the Goethe anniversary of 1949. Adapting his words to the “Schillerjahr 2005”, Kästner’s comment would read: “[Schiller], wie er es verdiente, zu feiern, mögen ein einziger Tag oder auch ein ganzes Leben zu kurz sein. Ein Jahr aber ist zu viel”.53 The “Schillerjahr” of 2005 was anything but the damp squib which some had feared and others perhaps had hoped for. Schiller has more to offer than entertainment but if 2005 saw an increasing awareness that he is a master dramatist and entertainer, only either the dyed-in-the-wool “Schiller hater” or the blinkered admirer of Schiller’s highbrow qualities could object. Even before the wave of conferences held to mark the 2005 anniversary, Schiller’s reputation in the academic world was assured, if not wholly unassailed. Measured in terms of the number of academic books and articles published in recent years, interest in Schiller is in rude good health. Between 1893 and 1958, a sixty-six year period, some 7,500 bibliographical items on Schiller are listed (an average of 114 items per annum), while for the forty-five years between 1959 and 2003 the figure is 9,842 (219 items p.a.). This represents a 48 per cent 49 Susanne Gabriel: Schiller für Kinder. Freiheitskampf light. Stern. 3.5.2005. Schiller für Gestreßte. Poetisch-philosophische Gedanken. Ed. by Ursula MichelsWenz. Frankfurt/M.: Insel 2005. 51 Ludwig: Das Urteil über Schiller im neunzehnten Jahrhundert (n. 35). P. 107. 52 George Steiner: Das Klassische hat seine Glaubwürdigkeit verspielt. Warum es im Jahr 2055 trotzdem eine Schiller-Feier geben sollte. Rede zur Eröffnung der Marbacher Sonderausstellung zu Schillers Leben und Werk, gehalten am 23. April 2005. Qtd. in Die Zeit. 5.5.2005. 53 Erich Kästner: Das Goethe-Derby [1949]. Qtd. in Bettina Meier: Goethe in Trümmern. Zur Rezeption eines Klassikers in der Nachkriegszeit. Wiesbaden: Deutscher-Universitätsverlag 1999. P. 86. 50 21 increase in average annual “output” in the period since Schiller’s two-hundredth birthday in 1959.54 These production figures conceal a welcome lack of agreement over why Schiller is a significant figure in German cultural history and over much of the detail of his artistic and philosophical achievement. The essays collected in this volume are revised versions of papers presented in June 2005 at the symposium Schiller: National Poet – Poet of Nations, which was hosted by the Department of German Studies at the University of Birmingham. The essays assembled here, by leading Schiller scholars from Germany, Canada, the U.K. and the U.S.A., shed important new light on debates concerning Schiller’s position as a national or trans-national figure. The essays by T. J. Reed and Norbert Oellers tackle and clarify questions (of Schiller’s survival and his perceived heroism respectively) which have had a significant impact on the way he and his work have been treated since his death. Secondly, there are re-examinations by Lesley Sharpe and Jochen Golz of Schiller’s activities as man of the theatre and publisher respectively in his own (pre-)national context. A third group of essays presents fresh analyses of Schiller’s poetic and dramatic achievements; with differing emphases and methods of interpretation, K. F. Hilliard, David Hill, Steffan Davies and John Guthrie examine elements of Schiller’s drama and poetry in their contemporary context, while Francis Lamport, Jeffrey L. High and Maike Oergel investigate (trans-)national dimensions of his work. Fourthly, there are essays which explore hitherto relatively neglected aspects of Schiller’s writings: Ritchie Robertson investigates Schiller’s attitude to Jesuits, and Alexander Košenina considers Schiller as a crime writer. Finally, the uses and abuses of Schiller’s character and writings at critical moments, or by significant figures, over the past two hundred years are analysed by David Pugh, Nicholas Martin and Paul Bishop. From these various perspectives, the contributions to this volume illuminate Schiller’s achievements as poet, playwright, thinker and historian, and bring acute insights to bear on both the history of Schiller’s impact in a variety of contexts and on his enduring importance as a point of cultural reference. I should like to thank colleagues and graduate students in the Department of German Studies at the University of Birmingham for their enthusiastic support of the Schiller symposium. I am very grateful to Joel Love for his assistance in compiling the indexes to this volume. I also wish to record my gratitude to Lesley Sharpe, for helping to provide the inspiration and encouragement necessary to organise an event of this kind. 54 Figures compiled from Schiller-Bibliographie 1893–1958. Ed. by Wolfgang Vulpius im Auftrag der Nationalen Forschungs- und Gedenkstätten der klassischen deutschen Literatur in Weimar. Weimar: Arion 1959 and from the bibliographies, ed. by Ingrid (Hannich-)Bode and Eva Dambacher, which have appeared at intervals in the Jahrbuch der Deutschen Schillergesellschaft since 1957.